Strangers on a train

In the last few days I’d had ripped my heart out, I’d gone back to work two days after my mum died for two reasons. Firstly I just needed to get back to normality, the whole family had been staying at my parent’s home for ten days and we were all emotionally exhausted. Secondly I needed the money; unfortunately I had no savings so really I went back to work way too soon, luckily my clients where very understanding, but it felt weird to be back in the busell of the world dealing with everyday matters.

On the train to work I sat on my own and turn my I pod on full blast with positive get up and go tunes just to get me through the journey. On my third day back I saw some teenage students laughing and joking with one another get on the train near my usual seat, usually this would not bother me at all but I had no wish to be the middle aged nutter with tears in his eyes so I moved as far anyway from them as possible.

I just could not hold it in that morning I had been bottling it up to function and I burst out crying. I had not noticed till then but there was a lady sat behind me. I turned to her and in way of explanation I said” I, am sorry I, am grieving”. She miss heard me, I assume from her ascent she was German or mid-European and could not tell what I’d said .She thought I’d said breathing, I said "no grieving” I corrected. She got up she fixed me square in the eye at first I thought she was perplexed by my utterance. She said “don’t say that again” our eyes meet again this time I could see the pain in them a pain which was a reflection of my own. I saw the woman’s soul; a total stranger I did not know was there a minute ago. She asked me who had died and I told her my mother and then she told me grasping my hand that her partner had died two days before. At the next stop I got off the train I said something weakly like “we will get through it” with a thumbs up quite pathetic really but who knows what to say at a time like that.

I do not know what to make of this experience, two people with nothing in common but shared grief but how odd that we should sat right next to one another on a crowded train. Everything is heightened around death but if I live to be one hundred I will never forget the look in that woman’s eyes. I feel we were both helped one another in some way knowing that we are not alone. Grief strips you of your outer layer, but with the exposure we see the world with new eyes. I wonder if such experiences are common and what other people make of them. We are strangers but it is our emotions which define us and how we act on them in the treatment of others. This is what I believe that my mother was present in that moment.