There was a couple who didn’t have kids. The grandparents were having a 50th-anniversary event somewhere in Virginia—I don’t know where. All of the kids and all the grandkids were coming. The couple—that is, the grandchildren, the couple who didn’t have children—were asked to go there first so they could greet everybody, because you don’t have a lot to do anyhow. You don’t have any kids, so go there first. Whoever said this again? Genius, genius. You think they want to be treated like they’re different from you? Also, he was supposed to go there first and greet everybody, him and her, and he was supposed to speak over Shabbat.
On the way to Virginia, in the car, he got a phone call from the hospital: “We’re ready now for another cycle.” That means some kind of procedure now. So he called the representative of the organization he was working with and asked, “How do we—what should we do?” They said, “You’ve got to go to the hospital. If you have a chance at a cycle, now’s the opportunity. Forget the weekend. You’ve got to go to the hospital.” He said, “But what do we say?” He said it was a time when people didn’t have GPSs yet. He said, “I don’t know. Say you had a flat tire, you didn’t make it, something like that.” Bottom line, he couldn’t figure out what to say, and the couple ended up in the hospital for Shabbat.
At their 50th anniversary, these parents had every single one of their descendants at the event except this couple. The couple didn’t tell anybody why. So, at the 50th anniversary, the father of this couple didn’t talk to his son or daughter for three months. “You were the only one who didn’t come. What kind of chutzpah (audacity)? You’re the only couple that didn’t come to Shabbat.” Now, first of all, genius father, could you anticipate? Maybe they have a reason. You think they just decided to be bozos and be the only ones who don’t come?
I said, “But why didn’t that person just get on the phone and tell his father, ‘Hi, Daddy—Abba (daddy), Tati (daddy), whatever you call them—hi, we can’t make it to Shabbat because we have a cycle we have to try, and therefore we can’t make it. We so badly want to be there.’ Why can’t you say it?” They said to me, “Rabbi, here’s what we can’t say. Every time we talk, you know what happens? We tell our parents, and then our parents ask us 5,000 questions. So we’re done. Or we tell our parents, and two minutes later they tell all of our cousins. Or we tell them a little bit, and then they come up with all kinds of suggestions.”
You’ve got to love the people who come over to somebody who doesn’t have something, doesn’t have a job, doesn’t have a child, doesn’t have a spouse or whatever, and right away tell them, “You’ve got to do this segulah (spiritual remedy). If you go to this rabbi and this grave on Tuesday, and you drink this milk with oil and salt and vinegar and gasoline, and you put a red string around your arm, and you sit on it, and you do it for 40 days, you’re going to…” The rabbi—we get segulah after segulah, after suggestion, after question, after comment. “We just can’t do it.”
I said to them, “I hear you. I hear you. I really do. But I wish you would share a little more, because you don’t—you have nothing to hide. You’re the same as everybody else. Everybody would like to have children. For some reason, Hashem right now didn’t send you children, and you’re doing the best with what Hashem sent you. Where’s the insecurity? Where’s the embarrassment? What are you uncomfortable about? You have nothing to be ashamed of. Not a dot. Not a little, not a maybe. There’s nothing hazit. There’s nothing nebach (unfortunate). There’s nothing to feel bad. You don’t need a hug. You’re wonderful people doing your best. You have to think like everyone else has to think. We’re all the same. You are all the same. We’re all the same. We’re all doing our best. We all want the same thing. Sometimes Hashem sends it. Sometimes Hashem doesn’t send it. And we’re trying our best.”