Yahrtzeit candles

I have an early memory from childhood of yahrtzeit candles illuminating the living-room of my families house at the time on 14th Street in Brooklyn during the evening following Kol Nidre services at the start of Yom Kippur.  At the time I'm quite certain that I didn't know the symbolism of the candles, which are lit and burn for around 24 hours continually during yizkor dates of the Jewish year, of which Yom Kippur is perhaps the most commonly observed.  Rather, all I knew was that one this one day of the year these special candles were allowed to burn, unattended throughout the night and day while no one was around.  This was something quite remarkable and against my understanding about the use and safety of candles at the time.

Candles, as I knew them, were always either meant to be blown out, like those on a birthday cake, or left to burn out on their own while there were people in the room or area to keep an eye on them, such as those lit on Hanukkah and Shabbat.  At an absolute minimum, if candles would need to be left burning and unattended for some remarkable reason they would be placed on a plate or other, suitably fire-retardant surface lest they fall over and set the neighborhood on fire.  But the yahrtzeit were different.  They were given dispensation to be left alone, burning, throughout the night and day.  True, typically these candles are in squat glass or metal containers making the risk of causing a visit by the FDNY, but they were, to my young mind, still candles all the same.

Thus it was that at some point in the night after Kol Nidre services when I was probably not even 8 years old - we moved from 14th Street just before I started the 4th grade - I came downstairs to see the candles burning and illuminating an otherwise near, pitch black living-room.  My memory is lacking on how many candles there might have been, but what I know for sure is that they were lit for my paternal grandmother, Helen, who passed away shortly before I was born, and the other deceased generations of my mother's and father's.  Over the years the numbers and names of people for whom my parents' lit candles for increased to include both my grandfathers, my uncle, and my great-aunts, as well as names they kept in the heart but might not have made vocal to me.  Never, however, had I lit candles of my own.  It always felt that that tradition was for my parents' generation and not (yet) something I was meant to do since, although I'd mourned the loss of people close to me and whom I held dearly, death had not "touched me."

As anyone who knows me or has read portions of this blog will know, that last vestige of innocence was ripped from me the day after my birthday in 2008.  Since then, on every Yom Kippur as well as every November 16, I light yahrtzeit candles in my own house in memory of Karen and James. This year I lit them for the fourth time before leaving for temple.  When I returned, hours later I felt like that young boy again as I opened my apartment door and was greeted with the flickering light against the wall of the two small flames gently illuminating an otherwise darkened living-room.  Pausing in the dim light I felt a peacefulness with the world around me and even a gentle innocence.

Yom Kippur is a time of year that we reflect on death, that of our loved ones who have already left this physical world as well as our own mortality.  No day passes that I do not think about Karen; indeed it is her memory that helps to guide me on my continued journey.  But the reflection at ourselves that comes from the liturgy of this day is not something I, or most people, consider - nor, I believe should it lest we become too caught up in what is to come to no longer appreciate what we have now.  The prayer book we use during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is titled in English "Gates of Repentance" and the days referred to as the "Days of Awe," and I am now, in the distancing wake of the events that changed my life so dramatically, understanding anew what those terms mean and why the rabbis chose them.

In the yizkor service I will shortly be attending, there is a line that reads something like: "birth is a beginning, and death a destination; but life is a journey, one of going and growing from stage to stage."  I've read these words hundreds of times before I lost Karen and dozens, if not hundreds, since.  There is power in that statement and one I am reminding myself more and more lately . . . life IS a journey and one I plan to be on for many, many years and stages to come.

G'mar Chatima Tova: my you all be inscribed in the Book of Life for health, happiness, and blessing in the year to come.