Awakening to the Toll of Death
A Jew from New York approached me when I was there receiving the public. “Honored Rav, I have come to part with you, for I don’t know if I will ever see you again.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked, bewildered.
The man replied that he had been diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors gave him only a few weeks, or months, at the most, to live.
I tried to offer words of encouragement to this broken man. I told him to strengthen his emunah in Hashem, Who can rescind a harsh decree in an instant. But the man insisted that he felt his end was near. His only desire was that I pray to Hashem to treat him with mercy and forgiveness and not remind him of his many iniquities.
Suddenly, in the midst of his painful words, he burst into uncontrollable sobs. He began confessing his sins, reiterating, “Woe to my soul! What shame awaits me on High!”
When I heard these words, I was thunderstruck. This was exactly what the Vilna Gaon had said immediately before his death. The worst form of Gehinnom in the World to Come will be the shame one feels when his sins are revealed.
“Tell me,” I asked the man, “why didn’t you consider this shame years ago, before being diagnosed with cancer?”
The man fell silent.
Throughout his life, this man was held captive by his Yetzer Hara. Now, when death was staring him in the face, he was suddenly enlightened by the unvarnished truth. He felt the urge to introspect. It was only then that he felt the severity of his sins. His heart filled with fear of the upcoming judgment. He was truly worried about his poor, pitiful neshamah. How would he defend it when standing before the Heavenly Tribunal?
