When Rachel lost her mother, her friend Miriam came to be menachem avel. She noticed that the back porch of the house was alive with flowers and greenery of all sorts, bursting from pots arranged artistically in every available space.
“What an amazing garden your mother had!” she said to Rachel. “She must have really had a green thumb.”
“Oh, she did,” Miriam agreed. “She loved planting, and weeding, and feeding, the whole process. It gave her such simchah. In the last couple of years, when she got too old to bend down and plant in the ground, she started this potted plant garden on the porch.”
Then Miriam recalled one time when her mother hadn’t been able to tend to her garden. “About five years ago, she needed surgery,” she said. “She was in rehab for quite a while, and we were all busy with her. No one had time to tend her garden. She was sad about that.
“But, the day I brought her home from rehab, we were greeted by an amazing surprise. All along the walkway, big, bright, beautiful flowers had been planted. The house looked like it was in an enchanted garden.
“And you know who did it? Her next-door neighbor, Yocheved, had bought all those flowers and planted them just to make my mother happy! The whole way home from rehab, my mother had been feeling low. When she saw the flowers, it was like someone switched on a light bulb. My mother’s neighbor knew just the right medicine.”
Thoughtful chessed that gives another person just what they want or need is the real deal. It has the power to turn our world into a little corner of Gan Eden.
RABBI NACHUM SCHEINER
