Over dinner one night she set down her spoon and said she had to find someone: a woman named Theresa, who for years had cleaned the restrooms at the bus terminal on the overnight shift, and who had, through all of it, quietly kept my mother alive.

Theresa had saved leftover bread for her.

She had let her sleep hidden in a warm supply closet on the coldest nights.

She had brought her coffee.

And it was Theresa who had told her, that final morning, to go get a warm meal at the new soup kitchen downtown — the soup kitchen where a rich man was learning to serve.

“If Theresa hadn’t pushed me to go that day,” my mother said, “I’d still be on a park bench.