When There’s Room in the Heart    

The Gift She Left Me

Growing up, Bubba was my second mother. She lived in my childhood home as far back as I remember, having moved in when I was a few months old, and staying for over 30 years. Bubba was a queenly but homey matriarch, a European-bred, old-world, daughter of a choshuve Galicianer family. She possessed a combination of regal graciousness threaded with so much compassion and down-to-earth wisdom, and living in such close proximity, I saw and absorbed it.

When people around me say things that are just wrong, I hear Bubba’s voice in my head: “It doesn’t matter who is right; you don’t have to be right, you just have to be kind.” Bubba always said that shalom was more important than being right and she’d just let things go. Today, my thought process follows hers — keeping the peace matters more than being right.

Bubba was also a woman with rock-solid strength, and that strength is embedded in another mindset I imbibed from her: She focused on the positive and accepted whatever challenges Hashem sent, never wallowing in self-pity. She felt bad for other people’s tzaros and cared deeply for them, but when it came to her own family, she wouldn’t allow herself to get dragged down and she taught us the same.

Bubba was an almanah; my Zeida passed away before I was born. When she lost her husband, she called her children together to reiterate this message: “We are not nebachs.” Later in life, when she lost her daughter and eventually a son as well, I saw tears roll down her face, but she still stood up straight and accepted her losses. She would not allow herself to slide into self-pity, and she held us to that standard as well. She refused to cut herself or any of us slack. And still today, her attitudes and expectations echo in my mind and don’t allow me to wallow in whatever may go wrong.