In today’s world, observing the small courtesies that make all the difference is more important than ever.

Small gestures can make a big difference to someone’s day, while compassionate actions with strangers in mind are usually accepted with gratitude. In short, it’s nice to be nice and can go much further than you think sometimes.

Just ask Brooke Ochoa who went to a restaurant for lunch when she saw an elderly lady approaching. The 30-year-old waited to keep the door open-an act she regarded as mere politeness. She didn’t know, however, that a remark that the lady would make a few seconds later would spark a chain of events that would cause her to go viral…

Brooke and the woman entered the restaurant at the same time, only for Brooke to hear the lady ask for a “table for one.”

When she realized that the lady was dining alone, Brooke approached her and gave her another act of kindness. Brooke went to the woman’s table and asked, “I also eat alone, would you like to have lunch together?” The lady, named Dolores, not only accepted Brooke’s offer, but she was very pleased with the company. According to ABC 6, the two struck an instant friendship during their meal, talking at length.

Dolores told Brooke that she’d been having a tough time of things of late. “Come to find out, she spent the last decade living with her mom, who recently passed away, and her aunt, who recently was put into a nursing home,” Brooke wrote in a later Facebook post about the encounter.

“She has been having a hard time being alone.”

She added: “She just kept smiling and saying thank you for listening to me, which made me smile too! Her words healed my heart just as much as I healed her lonely one.”

Brooke and Dolores enjoyed their conversation so much that they agreed to have lunch with each other every Thursday from that point on.

https://www.facebook.com/brooke.ochoa.5/posts/979039778813010:0

In a later update, not long after their first meeting, Brooke revealed that Dolores had passed away, making the fact that she was able to brighten her life all the more special.

If nothing else, this chance conversation is proof that the smallest gestures of goodwill can quite literally change a life. Neither of these women knew that Dolores’ days on this Earth were numbered, but they found solace in each other, and that’s what matters.