Since we are telling yartzeit stories… Tonight/tomorrow is my mother-in-law’s yartzeit AND that of her eldest granddaughter, the daughter of my sister-in-law.
My mother-in-law was not a frum woman, but except for my own parents, I have never seen a greater baalas chessed. With my father-in-law’s haskama, when they got married they moved her elderly parents in with them so she could take care of them until they died at ripe old ages. She also took in with them her newly-widowed sister and HER two children, until she got back on her feet. After the sister moved out and the parents passed away, she took care of her elderly mother-in-law. With all the siblings on both sides of the family, no one was willing to do what she did, and she did it with kovod and with simcha.
What was her reward in this Olam? I wish I could say that she had a long, healthy life. She didn’t, She was struck legally blind and mostly crippled through a devastating stroke, when my husband was just past Bar-Mitzvah age. She endured many corneal transplants to no avail, and developed severe rheumatoid arthritis. SO her life was spent bed-ridden in terrible pain, needing to rely on my dear shver to see to all of her needs (that is how they both wanted it).
But – she also was zochah to see her only son become frum, get married and raise children who are all Ohavei Torah. She was very much loved by her daughter-in-law. who called her every day to chat about the aineklach’s chochmos (and if I was repetitious at times, it was all good, because she loved hearing whatever I had to tell her).
Her very final act was to be shomeres Shabbos. When I called her erev Shabbos before she had the final stroke that ended her life, I could tell her speech sounded slurred and off. I told my husband he HAD to spend Shabbos with his parents, because something was going on. So he went, and in the morning, my father-in-law wanted to turn on the TV, because being blind, her only pleasure was in at least hearing the TV programs that she loved when she was still sighted. Her response, “No. No TV. (my husband’s name) is here and it’s Shabbos.” She had what was to become her fatal stroke a few hours later, and she was nifteres a couple of days after that.
Everything my husband was and is, is because of the wonderful parents he had. May her neshama have an aliyah.