Standing Shivah לעילוי נשמת ציפא רבקה בת ברוך

Mrs. Rachel Stein

Prolific author, most recently of the book Uplift

She was a young mother with a houseful of children, and at this difficult time in her life, she felt torn in too many directions. Should she stay with her sick and dying mother or go home to her sick children who need a mommy to care for them? It seemed as if her mother was holding her own, so she left the hospital to be with her children for a bit. 

While still in the car on the way home, she got the call. Her mother had died. Alone in the hospital without her only child at her side. 

Rachel was very hard on herself. How could she have left her mother? What had she been thinking?

It took some time until eventually she realized that what had happened hadn’t been in her control. Nothing is. Hashem orchestrates each event so that they happen just the way they are supposed to. And Rachel believes her mother was somehow waiting for her daughter to leave before she died. She was protecting her little girl until the last moment.

She did take the lessons of her experience with her. Many years later when her elderly father-in-law was dying, she went to great lengths so that her husband wouldn’t miss the petirah.  With a flurry of last-minute arrangements, she and her husband were present when her father-in-law passed away. 

She obviously didn’t sit shivah for her father-in-law. But she “stood” shivah. Because we can lose people we love but don’t have the halachos of an aveil. It was a different journey than when she lost her mother. But it was a journey of loss nonetheless.

In her calm way, Mrs. Rachel Stein offers clarity and understanding about different kinds of loss and grief. 

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