A quiet thank you to someone I’ll never see again via /r/gratitude

I once stayed in a small town on the coast for a bit longer than I planned. There was a bakery that opened before the sun. And an old man there, he always greeted people like he was expecting them, like they were the best part of his morning.

That last day, he handed me my bread and said, “You’ll carry this place in you, I think”. I hadn’t told him I was leaving, or that I was not planning to be back.

He was right. I have. And I am grateful, not just for the bread of the kindness, but for the feeling of being seen by someone who owed me nothing at all.

Some people give you a kind of warmth that stays with you, and gestures that are small but too big to forget.

Who’s someone you still feel grateful for, even if they never knew it?