It was a wonderful good deed to bring a little comfort to the bereaved, particularly during the first seven days of mourning, when death and loss were still painfully razor sharp, she told herself with quiet satisfaction as she got up to take her leave.

She remembered those days, those terrible days and worse nights, when her dear Yitzchak Chaim had left this world, making her a lonely widow who often cursed the misery of still being alive. It helped that at that time, all her daughters still lived nearby. With time, of course, they and their husbands had moved away, all except her Zissele. And when Zissele’s children were born, one after the other, she was kept busy cooking and babysitting, educating and scolding. All that helped. To be busy, to have your kup drayed—day in day out—helped. But then tragedy had again overwhelmed her life.

Zissele, my little Zissele.

She would never recover from that, she understood. That perpetual sorrow was lodged in her heart forever, softening it to the sorrows of others, making it compliant and responsive. She never went to a shiva house now without becoming part of the mourning, whereas before, she had kept it all at arm’s length, happy to put in her time, chalk up her mitzvah, then escape back to her own life.

As she moved toward the rav to say the ritualized words of comfort and farewell, her heart ached with loss, not only because the deceased had been a friend but because death tested even the strongest of faiths. The darkness that came with death cast a deep shadow over the life-affirming rituals of even the most devout. From the moment you opened your eyes in the morning to the moment you fell asleep, your heart was ripped asunder anew. Was not the first prayer of the day, Modeh Ani, thanking God for restoring your soul, a reminder that the precious soul of your beloved would never again be restored to their body except during the Resurrection of the Dead? While she sincerely believed that would happen, as did every pious Jew (according to Maimonides, it was one of the fundamental articles of faith), she also knew that, like the coming of the Messiah, it could take a while.