Insensitive Comments

I’m with you on the timing issue, and there is nothing gained from commenting on the departed as to what they should or should not have done.

However, we have had many stories of heads of families pasing away and leaving behind uninsured (or underinsured)yesomim, and now there is a mad scramble to raise $ to keep the family afloat. True, talking about the need for insurance now is pointless (after all, it won’t bring poppa back) but it SHOULD be talked about so that uninsured people walking around today will see the consequeses of not taking their responsibities seriously.

Will the surviors be hurt by “insensetive comments”. Maybe. But if the next “besura raah” has a different ending because of the lessons learnt from the 1st tragedy, they family (and the mais himself) will have a degree of nechomah as a result.

Im so glad that somebody brought up this subject. Sometimes I read the comments and I cant beleive that people can be so insensitive!!! If someone just looses a child how in the world can someone post comments on how they feel the parent did wrong?? If the parent was wrong they will live with that feeling for the rest of their lives. They dont need anyone telling them that they were wrong. And half of you that post comments dont even read the whole story before you start bashing everyone you think was wrong. And so what if one person doesnt spell as good as you do?? Not everyone posting here is american. Fellow Jews going through tradgedies need our sympathy.You have things you want to vent about do it somewhere else.

Best Ima –

You are right, bashing the parents is wrong. And not making sure mistakes don’t repeat themselves is even more wrong.

Like my uninsured example, wif we as a society do not learn from others mistakes, THAT is tragic. If an overworked mother needs to:

* deputize her 11 y/o to tend to the 2 month old,

* who is also asked to frying onions for the side dish, and

* answer the phone, (beauce no one else is nearby, and after the 4th ring the screaming starts)

* and in the process the skillet gets pulled off the stove and gives little 2 month old 3rd degree burns,

then yes, we need not beat up the mother who now has to drop everyting and go to the burn unit.

But after the burns heal, WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THE SAME MISTAKES ARE NOT REPEATED!

Sorry for yelling, but I see this scene with minor variations played out all the time(ok, not the burn unit ending.

Mom is working herself to death, Poppa is juggling more than he can as it is, and so the beat goes on.

So the right thing to do, when things do spin out of control is to look and see, “what can we, as a society, learn from this to make sure it does not happen again?”

If we do that, then the pain has not been for nothing. If we stay complacent, we should be ashamed of ourselves

BP Totty, you made some good points. I get furious, mamesh screamingly furious, when I hear of the situation you described with the child who gets injured. The only part with which I disagree, is that the mother at some point SHOULD be getting a LOT of mussar for putting her child in danger. Unfortuantely, I see this a great deal when moms who have way too many children (for themselves to properly supervise), delegate the responsibility to their younger children, who after all did not ask to be made into substitute mothers. Accidents happen under these circumstances, because kids have the judgment of…well.. kids, and they cannot always be relied upon to watch their baby siblings properly. They should be allowed to be children.

EDITED

I had someone tell a woman who lost three children in an accident, R”L, that she should make sure she is not speaking Loshon Hara. Even were it true that she does so, and knowing the woman, I would doubt it, how does someone SAY such a thing to someone in such a tzoro?

estherh im so sorry you went through something like that amd im so sorry you had to hear a comment like that. Oomis i cant for the life of me understand what people are thinking when they make a comment like that. I lost a baby too. People who didnt think would say oh its such a zechut to have a child pass away with such a pure neshama my husband and I must be such special people if that happened to us. And people who had their head on straight would just tell us what they took apon themselves to do in her memory. Unfortunately not everyone thinks before they talk and give out advice but it really hurts when you read such a tragedy on a frum news site and see frum people writing such hurtful comments. Even if there is something constructive that you want to say think of how you would feel reading something like that if you were in their place G d forbid.

It is truly unfortunate that people feel they have a “right” to say whatever is on their mind and forget that Hashem gave them a guard “teeth and lips” to stop their tongue.

As far as the blogs go, they feel that their anonymity gives them the right to say whatever they choose and they also forget that Hashem is still above and knows everything. To him they are not anonymous.

Or how about, Hashem gave you this nisayon to be a kapara, because you were going to get much worse! (Yep, that’s a real comfort, folks!)

Speaktruth, I hope you have had a refuah shelaima by now, and experience much simcha in the future.

speaktruth – how sad. How are you now? May you only see refuahs and yeshuas from now on.

People say stupid things because they don’t know what to say.

I am eternally grateful to my mother, who gave me an etiquette book when I was a teenager. This was great for me, because I was socially awkward, and would frequently say some of these stupid things, or nothing at all, not out of malice, but out of awkwardness.

One of the chapters in the book was about things to say on all occasions. It reduces it to a formula, of course, but my heart thinks what it needs to, and my mouth says what the book says.

For instance, when you speak to a person who has just lost a loved one, you tell them how sorry you are for their loss, then recall an important moment in that loved one’s life, and tell why it was important to you. Also, you can speak of the virtues of the deceased person: you can never go wrong with that.

Knowing this “formula” made me less afraid to say something to a bereaved person. Even if I could not say what was in my heart, I could say something that would help relieve a small part of their pain, and that was important to me.

“I am so sorry that you hurt your <fill in the appropriate organ or system>. I hope you will be up and about and healthy soon.” works really well, too.

a day before my grandfather died, i fell down a few stairs and hurt my back quite badly. so the next day i stayed home…and that day my grandfather died. i grew up with my grandparents so for me it was like losing a father. i was sick the for 2 weeks…i couldnt keep food down. my idiot of an assistant principal came with my principal to me menachem the aveilim that were sitting shiva. as theyre talking, the subject of my injury came up, one of my relatives commented that in a way, me falling and injuring myself was a good thing, because as terrible as the tragedy as my grandfather’s death was…it would have been even worse if i had to hear it over the phone in school. to which the assistant principal said…”oh, he fell down only a few steps?!? he made it seem like 2 flights…thats not such a big deal” we, as a whole got up, and asked him to leave. some people just dont know how to control their mouths!

Thanks. Now, B”H I am mostly better although I still have a lot of rehab that I am going through. At least superficially on the outside I can basically walk so I don’t have to deal with questions from other people even though I still have difficulty walking.

At the points where I was not doing well, there were times when I wouldn’t go to chasunos or other things because of people’s comments and I think the more people who realize that the better.

I used to hang out with someone who was dealing with a different nisayon. Her way of dealing with it was to try and use humor.

One year for Purim she made me a t-shirt which had on the back things like “yes, I am still on crutches.” ” no, i don’t know when i will be better.” “yes, i checked into my dr. and he knows what he is doing. “yes, I am taking care of myself.” ” no, i didn’t try this type of alternative medicine or treatment but I am doing the proper hishtadlus .” etc.. it was sad but funny.

B”H one thing that I have recived from dealing with this nisayon was that I have become a much more sensitive person to other ppl now that I realized how much words can hurt.

Esther H –

As a male, I really cannot comment on this topic, but as a human being and a parent, I will say that the comment was uncalled for.

Even if it has some source in Torah (which I do not ever remember hearing) its not what you say to the parent who suffered the loss. Besides, I could quote dozens of mamrei chazal that give real chizuk to people who have just been tested as you have. (first place to look would be to see how the Torah deals with the loss of nadav and avihu).

Sorry for your loss and pain (not sure which hurts more)

Reading through all of your posts can help a person understand to what extent hilchos loshan horah can takeh be meakev the geula. These are all mitzvos d’oraysa, all of the mitzvos of bein odom lechaveiro – so what’s the problem? Why is it so, so hard, that after so many generations, we still can’t get it right? Even in our generation which is drowning in tzoro, how is it that people still feel that they can judge others (which is a common denominator in the above stories), and then speak? I guess that with the galus comes a lack of shlaimus within a person, and without shlaimus, of course, it is just too hard for the person to fix him/herself, and just so much easier to think he/she can fix the world outside. May Hashem bring every one of you, and all of klal Yisroel, a COMPLETE yeshua bekorov mamash.

What you (and R’Krohn) say is true, but it is not always possible to let it just fly over our heads. Certain hurtful comments that are made when one is in personal distress (during a shiva, for example) cannot simply be glossed over. Others can, however. I think I may have mentioned once on this forum that many years ago when I was sitting shiva for my father O”H, an acquaintance of the family came in and went on and on how touched she was by all that she heard us saying about my dad, and then remarked that after hearing me speak, she realized I have so much in common with her daughter. Knowing that her daughter is an extremely articulate, brilliant, and lovely young woman I was momentarily awash in the compliment – UNTIL – she completed the sentence and said, “yes,you and my daughter both have a great deal in common. After my daughter got married, she also got heavy.” My sister’s and my jaws dropped, and then after she left the house we started to laugh non-stop, and I simply said, “Neechamtani, Mrs. So-And-So, neechamtani.” Now THAT was a shiva visit from shiva land!

Another insensitive comment I have heard a few people say were to a girl named Aidel. Although she is a very fine girl with excellent middos, she is not exactly an aidel maidel knaidel type- she has her own style. Anyhow, people would tell her that with a name like that you would expect her to be aidel.

Best Ima, believe me, I was not hurt. I had many diverse and disparate reactions to that extremely inappropriate comment, but I considered the source, the woman’s advanced age, and her inability to censor herself (possibly the onset of dementia), and I wasn’t angry at all. I was flabbergasted, hysterically laughing, dumbfounded, and in disbelief that someone actually said something negative about my appearance while I was sitting shiva. But it was more the shock of hearing the second half of her sentence, because I was set up for it to be a great compliment, and then was sandbagged!

That’s ok, I cannot begin to tell you what happened at the shiva we sat for my mother O”H, when another “helpful” friend of the family informed me that my sister had been the ugliest baby she had ever seen and she did not know how to be able to genuinely wish my parents mazel tov at that time, seeing as her OWN baby was so gorgeous (and brilliant, and perfect, blah, blah, blah). You HAVE to keep a sense of humor about these things. In the great scheme of things, my sister and I are none the worse for wear, and it only reinforced for us the proper way to be menacheim aveilim. And btw, my sister was a GORGEOUS baby. I SAW her pictures, and my mom always told us stories of how the nurses in the baby nursery couldn’t stop holding her and putting bows in her hair. I was a preemie and not so pretty at birth until I gained some weight (but the woman was adamant that she was not referring to ME, but to my sister).

every insensitive comment is a stone that you can polish into a diamond, that you can take with you to Olom Ha Boh.

do YOU know the truth of the situation?

why should you let someone else control your inner thoughts and feelings?

be strong, cling to Hashem, and let the comment pass

this is a great opportunity to overlook someones mistake against you, so that Hashem will overlook your mistakes against him.

dont let this opportunity pass by unfulfilled.

Feivel, you are so right. When someone insults a person and the person is mevater, it is a tremendous sha’as ratzon where shomayim is open to the person’s bakoshos.

After reading some of the posts above it seems that the topic here is insensitive comments to difficult situations. I have a story which was not a difficult situation, rather, an uncomfortable one in which i’ve learned a lesson.

I was redding a shidduch for a relative of mine. This relative’s mother told me to find out what the other side said first and then they’d look into it if it was nogeiah. Fine, i was a bit nervous as i was dealing with family (actually it was a relative of my then new husband).

The other side said it wasnt for them. I called back this relative and told them the other side doesnt think its basherte (dont remeber my esact words). This relative’s mother says

have you ever redd a shidduch before?

I said “I’ve set up a only a couple of people”

She said “i can tell” and hung up the phone!

Being new to teh family made this situation even harder and i wondered why i even tried! With the whole shidduch crisis, i would imagine that prospective parents could be a bit more sensitive to the shadchans feelings!!

Ever since then, I dont redd shidduchim as much as i’d like to…or should i say, it takes me too much time to build up the courage to work on a shidduch…

estherh,

you are completely right. I admire your courage. B”H after talking it over with my husband and parents, i now have the outlook that I am bringing someone one shidduch clser to finding their basherte. It still takes me a while to build up the guts to redd a shidduch, but I try.

May Hashem grant you only good things in life…

estherh,

May Hashem send you a Refuah Shelaim B’karov. May you have good health and your strength back.

Regarding the comment said to you…I was very inspired by Feivel’s comment on issue- perhaps it will help you as well.

Esther, how ARE you feeling? You have been through so much this past year, but you always have an upbeat and positive attitude, and I truly admire you for it. But it cannot have been easy at times to keep that positive vibe going, and I can only hope it has strengthened you to know that total “strangers” daven for your complete refuah.

I agree that at the time of tragedy R’L’ the people it happened should not be given mussar.

What really bothers me is that if G-d forbid, something happens to say for example, Plony ben Plony, and people say something like;

“How could this have happened to such a wonderful person who was so good and kind”.

And Lets say for example, I happen to know this person, and in his case, I personally know he was far from being good, let alone a Tzaddik, about whom a new Tehillim, should be written.

In that case, I want to scream out, “I know this guy and he ruined my life with Loshon Hara, and cheated me in business by not paying me wages, he owed me!!!”.

That people would think of him, as so good, and then use him as an example to emulate, and learn from, is something that I think spreads evil and lengthens the Galus.

A member of my family just told me a story that happened to her when her adorable son was born. He really is a very handsome child, bli ayin hara, and was a gorgeous baby with deep dimples and a cleft chin. Someone actually had the stupidity to say to her,”But you know the dimples and chin are a facial deformity, don’t you?” Even if this is true, the fact is that dimples and cleft chins are extremely attractive to most people,and how on earth does someone tell a new mother that her new baby has a facial deformity, EVEN IF THE BABY DID HAVE ONE (i.e. a cleft lip and palate)?