So I told you I went to make a speech in Deal. I had to get someone to drive me; otherwise, I wasn't going to function. On the way, I'm usually on the phone all the way there and back. On the way back, I was really exhausted. At my niece's wedding the night before, when I see two in the morning, I was really, really drained. I saw a text message, and there was a name on it that I kept seeing texting me. I didn't respond to all the texts, but I kept seeing this name. I knew something was up, so I said, “Let me call this lady back.”
So about 1045 last night, I called the lady back. She said, “Hi. I live in Muncie. My husband's 29 years old.” I guess she's about a couple years younger; I'm assuming 27. She doesn't have a six-year-old. I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old. I think I got the ages right. Then on Sunday, my son was—my husband, excuse me—parked with his car outside of his yeshiva. He was sitting in the parked car, and a branch of the tree hit the window, pierced the window, pierced his heart, and killed him.
Well, I woke up pretty quickly, and then she said, “The reason I'm calling you is I've been telling the story all day. I just want to tell you what was pretty much the last thing I did with my husband. The night before Motzaei Shabbat (after Shabbat), my husband and I sat and listened to and watched your class that you gave on parashat Chayei Sarah, about marriage, about Derech Eretz (proper conduct) and marriage, about accepting one another.” She said, “You know, I usually watch it on Friday. Something happened. I got distracted. I couldn't watch it on Friday. And Motzaei Shabbat, my husband was listening to a different shiur (class), and after it was over, I said to him, ‘Why don't we listen to our behaviors class?’ And we sat together and listened to your class about marriage.
“I wish I had said what I felt at the time, but I know what I felt at the time. My husband is such a pure person. My husband never, ever, ever got angry. I wanted to turn to him and say, ‘You know how much I appreciate you, and you know how much I accept you,’ so to speak, which was the topic of the class. I didn't say it, but I know we had that moment together, and I'm sure he was thinking it, and so was I. And then the next day—that's the next morning—this tree fell and he passed away.”
So I'm hysterical, crying at this point. The thought that this woman is going to have this memory for the rest of her life of this class and this time of by. And it happens to be, you know, “Give me a class with no voice,” if you remember last week, and people saying, “You're a hero for, for...” He's giving a class with no voice here on my foot. This is just your step. And now that woman is listening to it, and the fact that it ended up creating that kind of moment for me was unbelievable.
I said, “I just want to tell you one thing. There was a family in the Syrian community, like 70 years ago. The parent who passed away wasn't the father; it was the mother. The mother had an aneurysm and passed away. She had a seven-year-old, a three-year-old, and a few-month-old. You have three children. It's the same story. I just want to tell you that family turned out—all three of those children got married. They all became way more religious, I thought the way from her then they were when they were children. All of their children are married, and all their children even from her and even grow more than them, and they're doing unbelievable things.”
And I said, “Those people all had but who has Shams so much better.” I find their life, even though they lost a parent—you know, one of them lost a parent. He was too small; he was only a few months old. He never knew his mother. And yet they're living beautiful lives today. I said, “The reason why the story means something to me is because the seven-year-old was my father. My father lost his mother when he was seven years old. She had an aneurysm or something. We don't know what it was. He had a sister who was three, and his brother was a few months old.” I said, “I hope Hashem is with you and gives you strength.”
As we're talking, you could see this woman's demeanor. She was crying during part of the conversation, but for a lot of it she was composed. And the idea of the words Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha (You shall be wholehearted with Hashem your God)—the idea of living a life with the mentality of olah temimah (whole burnt offering)—sort of crystallized in my head.
She said, “You know, there's another thing you said in the speech that I didn't know, when you said it, how much it was going to mean to me. You said in the speech how Rivka fell off the camel because life was not exactly what she expected it to be, because Yitzchak was not what she expected, and she covered her face with a veil to change her expectations and her dreams. On Sunday night, in essence, I had to cover my face with the veil and change my expectations and change my dreams. When I heard the message on Motzaei Shabbat, I never knew it was going to be this meaningful and mean what it ultimately ended up meaning in my life.”
Life requires toughness, but it also requires purity. It requires humility. It requires an ability to be pure with Hashem. Sometimes the punch you take, the insult you take, the competition that's difficult, or the failure that you're enduring requires toughness to rise up, but it also sometimes requires humility to just allow it to be. “Hashem, this is what you want me to go through right now. This is what you want me to endure. You know what? I can handle it, or I'm going to do whatever I can to handle it. That's how it needs to be.”
We say, “Hashem, my prayer to You should be a time of ratzon. Et is ayin tav. What does ayin tav stand for? Hashem, the et ratzon—the goodwill that we want between You—is that we have that purity. We should never have a tragedy even remotely close to this epic, incomprehensible tragedy this woman just endured. But the mentality is a lesson for everybody to learn from. Here's a woman telling you, two nights later, ‘I have to put the veil on and change my perspective.’ That's part of the toughness too. That's part of what it means to wear big boy pants. That toughness requires the humility to figure out what to do next, even when it didn't go as planned.”