I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Sunday after my half-marathon, I hunted for a suitable stand-in for a Yahrzeit candle, the memorial candle Jews light on Yom Kippur and on the anniversary of the death of an immediate family member.

I hadn’t forgotten about Yom Kippur – in fact, I’d wrestled slightly with my guilt about not doing anything at all. (I’ve never found services I’ve liked in London, they are outrageously expensive, and I have very few Jewish friends here.) But until Saturday night, I’d forgotten it’s one of the two days a year I should light a candle for my mother.

So there I was late Sunday afternoon in an Indian off-license on the outskirts of south London.

“Do you sell candles?” I asked hopefully.

“Candies?” repeated the woman at the counter in a thick Indian accent, gesturing toward the confectionary.

“No, candles,” I repeated, miming blowing one out. Which is exactly what you wouldn’t do with a Yahrzeit candle, which is supposed to burn for 24 hours, but never mind.

She pointed helplessly to another aisle of candy.

I wandered up and down the aisles of the shop, thinking how if I were back in the US this never would have happened. I wouldn’t be doing nothing for Yom Kippur – likely I’d be with my sister and her husband and friends – and most grocery stores eve would sell Yahrzeit candles, so there’s no way I could forget to buy one. (To be fair I never had to buy one in the US – my mother died the year after I moved to London.) I don’t fast on Yom Kippur – a doctor long ago suggested that I take the “illness” out that Judaism offers – but I still felt guilty being in a shop, even contemplating things I might like to eat. I remembered driving in the car at dusk on Kol Nidre with my mother years ago – I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. She’d just picked up a new car and was laughing nervously about how inappropriate that was on the eve of one of the most solemn holidays of the Jewish calendar. On the radio she found a broadcast of services from a synagogue, probably one in New York. Standing in the Indian grocery store looking at 3 for £1 Kit Kats, I wondered if I could find such a broadcast in England. I doubted it.

I was just about to leave when I spied fat white household candles in bunches of five – and next to them, towers of scented colored candles in glass bowls. “Burns for 30 hours,” proclaimed the package. Perfect. I couldn’t decide which smelled less cloying, so I chose the one that read “with love” – that was the point of this anyway, wasn’t it?

I arrived home just as dusk was falling and pulled up the text of the mourners kaddish on my blackberry (the fastest option), telling myself it was – and is – the thought that counts.

The candle glowed pink in its little glass bowl. Within minutes, the kitchen already was filled with its overly sweet smell. I thought of Shalimar, the perfume my mother always wore.

Until the last year of her life – when she was all but gone – my mother always went to the memorial service on Yom Kippur and at home, lit candles for her father and brother. So the candles, at least, are a ritual I’ve always wanted to do for her.

I don’t need a candle to remind me to think of my mother – I do every day -- and somewhere, I hope she knows that. But still I feel better for having done something, and I know that that would make her happy.