Off at a tangent

Right, you know how sometimes you just want to focus on one path, but suddenly another crosses the path that you're on?
Well, that has happened to me.
My mother in law was chatting yesterday and, oddly, I found myself listening carefully to what she was saying.
It was the usual start...rambling about this and that, general stuff - mostly about people we have never met or are ever likely to. It struck me what a head for detail she has, especially when recalling the distant past.
Suddenly she was back in nineteen o blob and telling me about her mother, who was blind.
Now, I knew that Grandma was blind, and I've always had the utmost admiration for her, given that she and her (blind) husband worked hard and raised five children.
What I hadn't realised though were the circumstances in which she had found out that she was going blind.
...and here's the really poignant part...
Grandma was eleven years old. Her eyesight started to fail. Certain people suggested old wives' remedies, such as blowing sugar into her eyes...well, I can only imagine how painful that must have been.
She had waited for an appointment at the hospital. It came - the date for her to attend was on her eleventh birthday.
On attending this appointment she was told that she was definitely going blind. There was no doubt about it, in fact, she would soon be completely blind and therefore she must be taken immediately to the Blind School.
So, on her eleventh birthday, she is taken straight from the hospital to the Blind School and left there as a boarder.
To add insult to injury, her beautiful long hair, long enough to sit on, was cut off to a short bob.
Was she bitter? Seems not, as, when asked, she simply said that it made total sense. The people looking after her and the other children had enough to do without having to worry about brushing numerous heads of glorious locks.
How very pragmatic.
Makes me feel ashamed of myself.