Patience at the first stroke, and the half nobody quotes

Almost everybody has heard the last line of this report. Almost nobody hears the rest of it, and the rest of it is the part that helps.

The Prophet passed a woman weeping at a grave and told her to fear Allah and be patient. She did not recognise him and told him to go away, saying he had not been afflicted with a calamity like hers. Later, when she was told who he was, she came to his door. He said that patience is at the first stroke of a calamity.

Two things to take from it. He did not rebuke her for how she spoke to him at that grave. And the line itself is about the moment the blow lands, when the first response is set. It is not a deadline you have missed at eight months, and it is not a sentence to hold over somebody who is still crying in the spring.