Humbling

Visited a friend today.  She just had a surgery and was finally home cuddling with her daughter.  Went to hospital alone.  Grandma loaded daughter and son onto the city bus to visit before she went in.  Woke up alone.  Cried alone. 
She is a tough, outspoken and even aggressive person.  When I first met her, what a mama bear.  So angry at the schools for her son's behaviors, achievement and self-concept. I sometimes steered clear of her because of her anger.
A series of grueling wake-up calls later, including a devastating diagnosis explaining the son's struggles, and she is still a tough cookie, but so, so wise, and so humble.  So ready to listen. So ready to learn.  Edgy, funny, energetic. 
So she's been humbled, but so have I, really.  This is not the first time I have been thrown together with someone so very different from myself and learned from them.  There was Andy's foster mother, Elsie.  There was Raymond's mother Nancy.  And now R.
Everybody has a story.  Everybody has a gift.