My grandmother was hospitalized. At first they thought she would be out within a few days, but the story stretched on, and so we arranged to take shifts to stay with her. My aunt asked each of the grandchildren to write themselves in on the schedule and give of their time for the tremendous mitzvah of honoring parents.
It wasn’t so simple, but I understood that I should take my turn, which came on a Thursday night. I came to take my shift somewhat hesitantly. It wasn’t just the time I was dedicating and the missed sleep, it was actually being in the hospital, fearing that perhaps something would happen specifically during my shift.
“Take our uncle’s phone number,” my cousin, who had taken the previous shift, told me. “He is medically savvy, and if something worries you, you should call him.”
Baruch Hashem, the night passed without incident.
The next day, Friday, my daughter came home from gan and said something about her earring. We were worried; she seemed to have remnants of an earring in her, and we thought it could be dangerous. There was a chance she would need surgery. Our kupat cholim was already closed, and we assumed we had to go to the hospital.
“Wait – just a minute,” I said suddenly. “Just yesterday I got our uncle’s phone number, in case a problem with my grandmother would come up in the hospital. Maybe he could help us now?”
I called him, and he had several questions, asking for important details, and he concluded that we did not need to go to the hospital. “It’s not urgent,” he explained. “Either it will pass on its own, or, if she complains of pain, you can see a doctor at the kupat cholim on Sunday. There’s no need to drop everything on Erev Shabbos and go to the hospital. No need at all!”
So, yes, it was decreed that I spend several hours in the hospital with my daughter, but I had already covered those hours by spending them with my grandmother, shetichyeh.
The heiligeh Reb Shlom’ke of Zhvill said: With every step that a person takes for the sake of another, he spares himself a thousand steps that were decreed upon him in Shamayim.
