Inspirational chance meeting

I'm back from the most amazing weekend... but before I give you the details, I need to share with you a moment I had last night on the plane ride home.


I was in the window seat (row 3) and a lady was sitting in the aisle seat, we had the seat empty between us. We watched the plane fill up, and were both relieved when we discovered that it would remain empty.. just that extra personal space, you know what I mean?
Well this very beautiful (both physically and spiritually) lady, was a bigger lady, but I don't think that she was any bigger than what I used to be. She expressed her secret concern at the fear of only just fitting in the plane seat, and I could relate, it was only this time last year on my trip to NZ that I had that same 'snug fit' feeling.
Anyway we got chatting about why we had been in Melbourne, I told her about Mish and the 12WBT, and the natural follow up conversation of how much lost, how much time, how its done etc etc. 
She then shared with me her reason for being in Melbourne. Her Sister had been in a devastating accident 12 weeks ago. A tree had fallen on her sisters car, and crushed her. She was not expected to survive, but despite the odds she has been in a coma, and slowly recovering, albeit with probable permanent brain damage.  This lovely lady with such a warm caring aura, had been travelling back and forth to Melbourne to visit her sister and help her through her recovery. I could see the emotion in her eyes, and she was fighting off tears as she spoke. 

She explained how her family had been blessed, and never really had any tragic events until this happened 3 months ago, and since then she had more friends and family affected by sudden deaths and life threatening diagnosis. All this stress in her life, and she coped by eating her way through the emotions, and living of hospital cafeteria food, and she had put on 10 kgs.  She was coming to the realisation that recent events had given her a wake up call, and made her see that life is short, and her chance encounter of meeting me and hearing my story had inspired her to do something about it. I gave her my blog address, so she could find out more about the 12wbt if she wanted. 
We shared stories. We related on many levels, from the book she was reading to movies we enjoyed. She was such an incredible human being, someone who volunteers her time to help families in Cambodia. She shared incredibly heartbreaking stories of some of her friends in Cambodia and how they survived the Kmher Rouge.  Such an amazing lady.  It dawned on me that the past 12 weeks had been so different for both of us, but life changing all the same, she saw me as inspirational for my weightloss, and I saw her the same way for vastly different reasons. 
If you can believe it, I left the plane without even getting her name...but hopefully if she does come here, and reads this, we will be able to get in touch, because Angels seated us together for a reason.  That one night's conversation may have been it, and if that's it, well it stirred something in me for sure, but I'd like to think there was more.