Story of the Day 5/4/2011

My friend Harriet, opened her door. She did this because someone had knocked on it which is how these things usually work.

A woman who lives in the neighborhood was at her door and told her, with concern , that she had come to pay a shiva call. This means that she had come to visit Harriet and to cheer her up, or just listen to her.
She was doing this because Harriet’s father had died.

Well, Harriet’s father had died, only not recently. I think about 18 years ago.

This is good, because otherwise Harriet would have done the only possible thing a normal neurotic Jewish daughter would do in this situation, and frantically have called her father or her mother to make sure her father really wasn’t dead and that they had forgotten to tell her.

Of course, in Harriet’s case, since he mother died before her father, I am not sure whom she would have called, but since her father’s health was not in question, as it rarely is once a person is dead, she was spared having to make this frantic phone call.

In the meanwhile, my advice to her is that if other kind neighbors show up at her door, don’t turn them away if they happen to be carrying some really good food- which is another staple of shiva calls.