The customer asked why I was crying into the onions

Dear Delyara, I’m a line cook. People assume kitchen workers cry because of onions. It’s useful. You can wipe your face with your sleeve and nobody asks too much. Tonight, I was chopping onions when my sister texted that our mother had been moved to hospice. I kept chopping. Forty-seven dinner tickets were hanging above the station. Gumbo, shrimp, two steaks medium rare, one no salt, one allergy note. There was no place in the rhythm for a mother dying six hundred miles away. A server came through the kitchen and joked, “Those onions got you bad?” I said, “Yeah.” My mother taught me to cook. She never used measurements. She would pour spices into her palm and say, “Your hand learns before your head does.” My hands kept working tonight. That felt like betrayal and inheritance at the same time. I finished the shift. I cleaned the grill. I portioned tomorrow’s sauce. Then I sat alone in the walk-in refrigerator because it was the only room where the noise stopped. My flight leaves at seven. I am afraid she will die while I’m in the air. I am more afraid she will wait for me and suffer longer.