Lighting Candles (Larsen)

Ohio started lockdown on my father’s Yahrzeit, a day we observe the anniversary of a death so devastating that – for the rest of our lives – we light a candle in memory. It seemed fitting – Dr. Acton grounded me for my own safety when I had already decided to call a victory if my grief allowed me out of bed.

My children did not subscribe to my easy win. To them, lockdown marked another adventure. I had already stocked the downstairs freezer with pancakes, turkey bacon, and pre-cut strawberries so they felt safe and prepared. Like prairie schoolers, they wanted to make candles, a task they promptly abandoned once they discovered that it was tedious and time-consuming.

So my husband and I sat at the stove, turning the wax over in our hands, talking. It almost felt like a date as we ruminated on potential pandemic projects: making the perfect bagel, getting the garden into shape, maybe hanging a hammock. Dad’s candle burned unwavering behind our makeshift double-boiler.

“I’m going to keep a journal,” I said. “To remember these times.”

“Don’t go overboard,” my patient spouse replied.

Don’t go overboard is a phrase I’ve heard a lot throughout my life. Mom always told me I burn the candle at both ends, and, even now, with COVID blazing, I still regret how much I agree to do. For the first 75 days, I wrote and photographed our time together, diligently adding a collage to a Facebook album each night before I went to sleep. I wrote it for future-me but my present circle of friends found it comforting, these daily dispatches from the abyss, a confirmation in the mundane that we could get through this, one Disney+ movie at a time. It should be a book! they said, and because ambition is never something I’ve lacked, I wrote a pitch and did some due diligence, sniffing out its potential. But that query stayed in my drafts folder. I didn’t really want to share it with the world, without understanding why. And then George Floyd was murdered and I couldn’t bear the comfort, privilege, and freedom of my hygge navel-gazing; I penned my last entry on May 29, the night the protests began.

Now it’s the eve of Yom Kippur and, when the sun sets anew, I will light my parents’ Yahrzeit candles again. I’ve been too busy to catalogue my cheerful brokenness. My children’s latest adventure begins with me bouncing the ball to teach B-buh-B in my new role as my son’s perma-sub pre-K teacher then running up to my daughter’s bedroom to toggle the wifi as executive assistant/ IT support amateur for her new role as a sixth grade remote scholar. I take the stairs to my un-air-conditioned attic office two at a time where I duck under the hammock and throw on a blazer even though it’s burning hot, late to a board meeting about the budget. In theory, I’m still a writer, a speaker, a coach. A social justice advocate. A business owner, piecing it together as the crickets sing, my loves sleep, and the sun shines on the Southern Hemisphere. A mother. A wife. A friend. A hugger but it’s hard to tell that when you only see me waving from a Brady Bunch box inside a laptop screen.

I am exhausted, forever different from these days both dynamic and dull, passing by so slowly I must quick-step each moment my eyes awaken; dancing while I sleep too, my husband tells me as I cry out from the memories of Kristallnacht, a night I did not live. It matters not. There are 37 days until the election, my heroes and friends are dying, there is blood in our streets and there’s another edict and another one and another one constantly, constantly pushed to my phone informing me there will be no justice as there has been no justice for 401 years. I imagine I can rest in January, maybe, safe and warm under a cozy blanket, candles lit to keep the darkness at bay, the work finally done. But that’s fiction, a fantasy, for I know no easy win awaits us; the work will not be done by January, regardless which suited man swears an oath.

Until then, I will work, pre-grieving alongside this city, this region, this country, this world, so many of us holding our breath waiting for something traumatic while experiencing trauma. I hold these unlikely words as an almost-prayer – the ones my parents’ friend printed onto the walls of her sixth grade classroom so long ago: Time will pass… will you? 

Brandi Larsen is a writer, speaker, and coach committed to creating a more inclusive publishing landscape. She speaks to audiences about how the book publishing process really works, connects writers to each other, serves as Board President for Literary Cleveland, and writes books and essays. Connect at: BrandiLarsen.com and @brandilarsen.