There is a worldly expression, ‘one father can worry about ten children, but ten children cannot worry about one father’. Likewise, a father’s love for his children is boundless, he loves them and worries about them even if they are also fathers themselves, and so too grandfathers to grandchildren. However, the love of children to their parents is more limited, and even if they love their parents very much, this love does nor come close to the love of parents to their children.
When Yehuda was pleading for the life of his younger brother Binyamin before Yosef, he requested that he have mercy on his elderly father, 'כבאי אל עבדך אבי והנער איננו אתנו ונפשו קשורה בנפשו' – ‘If I come to your servant my father and the youth is not with us, since his soul is bound up with his soul’ (44:30). This is a wonder, for at that moment Binyamin was not a young lad, he was the father to ten sons. Still, Yehuda did not ask on behalf of Binyamin’s sons who were dependent on their father, that they not grow up as orphans without their father to train them. Rather, he only mentioned his elderly father, and the pain he would suffer if they returned without Binyamin.
As the parsha continues, we see that when Yaakov descends to Egypt and meets Yosef, he says (46:30), 'אמותה הפעם אחרי ראותי את פניך' – ‘I can die this time, after having seen your face’. The Shelah HaKadosh explains by way of a hint, that when Yaakov Avinu saw that from this point on, he would need to be attended by his son he said, ‘I can die this time’, that it is better to die than to live like this needing the favors of his sons.
True, there is nothing like the worry and love of parents for their children. The parents do whatever they can, and even more than they can for the benefit of their children [sometimes they overextend themselves]. But when the time comes that the devoted parents do not have the strength that they did when they were younger, now must rely on others to help them. It would be better that these aides are their children. The obligation is on the children to do everything they can to alleviate this pain from their parents that they are dependent on their children and give them the feeling that we are happy with them and not chalilah that they are a burden to us, and of course, to rejoice every day that we can fulfill the mitzvah of honoring parents.
-Tiv HaTorah - Vayigash
