The Manhattan grocery store worker fatally crushed by an illegal freight elevator while on the job was a hard-working single mom of four whose death leaves a void just before the holidays, her “devastated” daughter said Wednesday.

“I’m just sad right now,” Maria Sanchez’s eldest daughter, Jeylin, 21, told reporters at the family’s Bronx home. “I can’t believe she will never walk through this door again.”

Sanchez, 39, was loading produce onto a freight elevator in the basement of the Food Emporium on West 43rd Street near 10th Avenue Tuesday when the elevator — which the city Department of Buildings says was illegally installed — malfunctioned, crushing her, authorities and sources have said.

“The holidays are not going to be the same anymore. She always cooked holiday dinners,” Jeylin said through tears. “This year we will just be together and think of her.”

Sanchez emigrated from Tlaxcala, Mexico, about 15 years ago, settling in New York in 2012.

She’d worked at the Hell’s Kitchen grocery store for about five years, supporting Jeylin plus two younger daughters, ages 16 and 5, plus an 11-year-old son.

“I was devastated and in disbelief when I heard,” said Jeylin, recalling the moment that her weeping father called with the tragic news.

“He was crying. He said she had an accident and he didn’t think she was going to make it,” recalled Jeylin. “I was at work. I left my job and walked to her job.”

There, she met up with her distraught father.

“When I saw him, I ran to him and we hugged and cried,” said Jeylin.

She declined to discuss the circumstances of her mother’s death, preferring instead to remember her life.

Sanchez enjoyed cooking, dancing and watching movies with the family.

“She tried to get me in the kitchen but I never would,” joked Jeylin.

“She loved to dance cumbia,” added Jeylin, referring to the traditional Latin American dance. “She loved to dress up and get her hair done. She would put on her heels and make-up, and she looked beautiful.

“She was a beautiful person.”

Jeylin remembered her mom as “very family-oriented” — a mantle that she will now take up for her three younger siblings.

“I’ll never get through this.  This is one of the worst things in life, to lose your mother,” she said. “Now, I have to step up and take care of my siblings. That’s what she always wished for — for us to stay together.

“I’ll make sure her wish comes true,” said Jeylin. “That’s one of the ways I’m going to honor her memory.”