Baal Tshuveh frustrations

Avraham Abutbul, Lazer Brody, and Shuli Rand

From Here

You wanna know pain? I'll show you pain.

A local non-frum/maybe half-frum Jew walks into shul to say Kaddish. He seems like a somewhat affluent man, yet disheveled, like he hasn't slept or shaved for a few days. It turns out his dear wife of many years just passed away, and he's still in middle of Shivah. So the Rov tells him to sit down on a low chair, and that the people davening there will bless him for his recent loss. So, one by one he hears the "HaMokom" from everybody at the Minyan and thanks them for it, although he's not quite sure what it is they're saying. A Phenomenon like that is not something you see every day, but it sure does prepare you for what you might see outside of your local frum neighborhood these days.

There was this one gentlemen - a real Tzaddik, a Baal Tshuveh, yes, and most frum people can learn a lot from him - who also wanted to partake of this Mitzvah, (for lack of a better term) and who also started to say the HaMokom. Lo and behold that's all he could remember, he couldn't remember the words that follow! The pain and frustration that was visible on his face was worse than anything I had ever seen. Of course he wouldn't ask anybody what the exact words were, at least I didn't see him doing that. I also couldn't bring myself to tell him what they were, for fear of emabarrassing him further, since he didn't know that I saw him forget. So, he quietly and humbly walked away, in a very "aw-shucks" way lamenting the fact that he couldn't console the poor old man on his loss. What's ironic about all this is that he must've heard the phrase hundreds of times when being consoled for his own recent loss.....