It was the kind of crying nobody should see, especially in a public place. I was on the late afternoon train out of London to Cambridge, heartbroken because my first real relationship was ending. ("I can't do this any more," the medical student told me as we walked to King's Cross. "When you lived here it was one thing, but this is impossible.")

Taking a seat in the last row of the almost-empty last carriage, I shoved myself as close as possible to the window. I could feel that my face was raw and red from acidic tears, and now looking at myself in the train's window, I could see that my eyes were crimson-rimmed with eyelids as white, puffy and thin as the skin on a mushroom.

What I couldn't understand was that it was simply an ordinary Sunday for everybody else in all the towns and villages we were passing. People would be reading the last of the newspapers, doing laundry or washing up after a big meal, but for me the world had changed.

I kept my head turned to the window so that nobody could witness my shame and panic, but when the conductor came by to take my ticket and saw my expression, he sat down.

I was 22; he was probably 65, or 50, or maybe just 45. All I knew was that he was clearly a man whose days of crying in public, or even sitting next to girls who cried in public, seemed long past. Efficient, professional, courteous, at first glance you wouldn't have thought he was the type who'd check on an unhappy, bedraggled girl.

But that's precisely what he did. In a way that was not typical for many of the English people who I'd met, he took the seat next to mine and asked, in a straightforward manner as if merely seeking information: "Dear miss, are you quite all right?" I swear it was the word "dear" that got me. I looked up and because of his kindness – although the tears came to my eyes again – for the first time in hours I stopped crying.

Once I started talking, I kept talking. I explained how the most important relationship in my life was unravelling. I told him about how I'd bought a one-way plane ticket to England the year before, expecting never to return to the States because I'd found a boy out of a fairytale. I told him that I'd learned to stop believing in love after my mother died years ago but that I had believed in it again, and now it was being taken away.

Finally, when I stopped to blow my nose in a tattered piece of tissue, he spoke. "You've got your life in front of you and plenty of time to make it a good one," he said in businesslike manner. "Better to learn what can't be fixed than hold onto useless bits and bobs." Then he rose, accepted my ticket and resumed doing his official job.

In the 38 years since that Sunday afternoon, I have indeed made a good life, although it hasn't always been an easy one. I found true and lasting love, discovered the work I was meant to do and created a community of friends more comforting and wise than I could have imagined when I was a girl.

But there's one thing I wish I could have done, and that's to thank the conductor on that train. His patient, sincere and yet disinterested concern for another human being who was clearly in pain made an irrevocable imprint on my life and changed it for the better.

I felt alone and hopeless before our brief conversation. Afterward, I felt as if the future might not be as miserable as I thought. It didn't take nearly as much as I thought it would to give me hope.

I still owe that man a debt of gratitude. I bet you owe someone that kind of debt too. If it can't be repaid personally, it must be dispersed outward. Every gesture toward someone in pain, lost or who needs help, is a way to pass those thanks along.

The Hartford Courant

Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut and the author of If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse? and eight other books.

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