What my husband’s grandmother taught me about empathy

She’s 97 and still apologizing for grieving. Sometimes, the bravest thing is to simply listen.

It was Erev Shabbat.
My husband’s grandmother walked in. Ninety-seven years old. Small but proud. Carrying her walker with a grace that dared you to call her fragile. She came to spend the weekend with us.

That night, we lit candles together. My 3-year old daughter, wide-eyed, blessed the flames alongside her great-grandmother, for the very first time.

At dinner, we didn’t turn on the news. We asked questions. We listened.
She told stories about the early days of the state. About scarcity, fear, hope.
About juggling French and Arabic from her childhood in Morocco while learning Hebrew from neighbors. About biking across town with children in tow and no idea how to ask for directions.

And then we played Rummikub. Laughed and argued like kids. No headlines. No sirens. Just generations clinking glasses and passing turns.

After the kids went to sleep, a conversation unfolded, one I wasn’t ready for, but will never forget. I poured us tea. The simple, “How you’ve been?” landed like a lifeline.

“Old age is hard,” she said, looking straight ahead. “But in times like these? It’s unbearable.”

Her caregiver had been on vacation when Operation Rising Lion broke out. There’s no safe room in her apartment, just a stairwell. So that’s where she’s been heading, alone, every time a siren wailed. Slowly. Carefully. By herself.

I asked how she’d been coping. I didn’t know she’d been alone during the worst of it.

And then it began. Not a rant. Not a complaint. Just grief, with no escape hatch.

She told me she doesn’t expect her children to drive from other cities to help her shower at five in the morning when her bladder betrays her. They visit. They call every day. They help a lot. But still. She doesn’t want to bother them. Doesn’t want to be a burden.

What does she want? One good neighbor. Just one. Someone who might knock on the door and say, “Let’s go to the stairwell together.” There isn’t one.

“I’ve gotten used to being alone,” she said. “But it doesn’t get easier.”

I’m half her age, drowning in noise most days. I told her honestly: I’m raising four kids under 13. I long for five minutes alone, just a quiet bathroom break without a child yelling through the door.

She smiled gently. “You don’t understand me.” And then her voice shifted.

“Every time I hear the words hutar le’pirsum (‘it’s now permitted to publish’), I break. I’ve been crying for our soldiers, our children, our families… for 630 days. I’ve reached a dark place. I don’t know how to carry it anymore.”

I know this grief too well. I’ve felt it in my own chest. I’ve heard it from mothers, sisters, friends, colleagues. 639 days since October 7.

But hearing it from a woman who’s lived nearly a century, who survived other wars, who built a life in this land, who now cries alone in the mornings? That broke something new open.

I had no pep talk. No “things will get better.” I just sat there. Held her hand. Let her cry. Let myself cry.

I offered the only thing I had: presence.
I didn’t change the subject. I witnessed.

And then, like most Jewish women I know, I tried to find light. “I know your children do help,” I told her. “Your daughter couldn’t host you this weekend, so she called us. And here you are. That’s love too.” She nodded. And for the first time in our conversation, her face softened.

“They try. They really do. But it’s hard for them to hear how I feel. They want to fix it. But sometimes… I just want someone to listen.”

And that was it.
Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do isn’t to solve. It might be to listen.
To sit in the discomfort. To make space for someone else’s pain.

It wasn’t a light weekend. But it was luminous.

Maybe what these difficult times ask of us isn’t more strength, but softer hearts.
Not more action. We’ve had plenty, and not the kind we wished for.
Not more advice. Just braver listeners.