Yesterday, the little hole-in-the-wall deli/sandwich spot in my office building was closed, an unusual occurrence. Mrs. Kim is always there early in the morning — you can even get a good breakfast there. I was disappointed because I didn’t have my cup of tuna salad for lunch. Just in case, I brought my own today, and sure enough, the Summit Deli doors were closed and padlocked, with newspapers in front and mail shoved under the door.
And then this appeared in today’s paper:
Woman Killed Trying to Cross Street
A 58-year-old Silver Spring woman was struck by a van and killed yesterday morning while trying to cross New Hampshire Avenue in Colesville, possibly to catch a Metrobus, Montgomery County police said.
In Sook Kim of the 700 block of Buccaneer Court was hit in the southbound lanes of the avenue at Eldrid Drive about 6:25 a.m., they said.
I feel strange right now. I didn’t know Mrs. Kim beyond the exchanges at the lunch counter. She always seemed a bit harried and surly, actually; and was often quizzical about my penchant for tuna salad in a cup without the bread. But she was a fixture in my work life for the last two years, and it was shocking and depressing to hear the news this afternoon.
Back during the sniper shootings here in the DC area, one of the victims was a neighbor who lived behind me. She was shopping at the Home Depot where I shop. When I got home, CNN was camped out behind my house. I never met her. But I felt a weird, proprietary depression about her death.
It’s very strange how the death of someone you don’t even really know can make you feel so depressed.
