Remembering

As summer turned to autumn in London, I knew every year to keep an eye out for Yom Kippur.

Preprinted calendars sold in England don't tend to list the holiday, the way those in the U.S. do. Apples and honey and honey cake, the traditional desserts of the Jewish New Year (the week before Yom Kippur), don't crop in supermarket displays, the way they do in many U.S. cities. Nor can you buy a Yahrzeit candle from the local Safeway – though after years of nicking the memorial candles from my grandmother, last year I discovered they're sold in Selfridges.

Back in the U.S., where the American language setting on my iPhone even recognizes the occasional transliterated Hebrew words like kaddish (mourning), I thought reminders of Yom Kippur would be unavoidable. Certainly in New York, arguably one of the most culturally Jewish of all American cities, I never thought I'd have to hunt for a Yahrzeit candle in the hours before sundown.

I have an uneasy relationship with Yom Kippur. For years I loved the idea of being forgiven once a year; a slate washed clean, or – my preferred method for starting anything anew – a fresh notebook. Except Yom Kippur required 24 hours of fasting, so either my head was full of food or my stomach was (and therefore my head was full of guilt, not just for bingeing, but for doing so on a day meant for atonement).

I stopped fasting about eight years ago, availing myself of the Jewish get-out clause of doing so if one is sick. I don't know that the relief from the more practical aspect of the holiday made me any more spiritual about it, because then my mother died. Until her very last Yom Kippur – a couple of months before she died – she always went to synagogue on the holiday for the special memorial service for the dead. Like every other religion, Jews have our superstitions, and because of this, generally you do not attend a Yizkor service, as it's called, unless you have lost an immediate family member.

My arrival in London in 2002 was timed to be just after Yom Kippur. I didn't want to spend the holiday alone in a new city, so my flight was the morning after break-the-fast. I remember reluctantly leaving the party to finish packing. The next year may have been, I think, the only year I went to synagogue in all the years I lived in London – and I have a memory of meeting my friend Graeme, at the time the only English Jew I knew, in the pub afterward (He had not gone to services.)

Still, I always lit a candle for my mother and called my grandmother, her mother, who had a lineup of flames so long it must have looked like a menorah. Her parents. Her husband. Her son. Her daughter.

Last year she was upset because she hadn't wanted to bother anyone to buy Yahrzeits for her, and so she didn't have any. I looked at the candle I'd bought in Selfridges and told her it was the thought that counted; that she could light a regular candle and everyone would still know she was thinking of them. I told her that like cards and presents on Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, lighting a candle on Yom Kippur is nice but what really counts is how you remember them the other 364 days.

She was quiet for a few seconds. My grandmother was a worrier by nature; she frequently sighed in her sleep and would be up at 3 am, panicking about details that became smaller and smaller as her world did. (In the last years of her life, she would be worn out just by all-night thoughts of how she was going to get out of a car or a restaurant booth – both exhausted her.)

"You know, you're right, Beth," she said. Except she used a diminutive of my name. I remember it specifically because my grandmother wasn't one for endearments. It felt like an anointment of sorts. I could not take away my grandmother's considerable pain, but I glowed thinking I had given her a bit of peace, even for a few minutes.

This year I kept forgetting it was Yom Kippur. I briefly considered going to my sister's for the holiday, but decided against it. I realized I rarely go to supermarkets anymore; it's just not where I buy food these days. And today I tried all the ones in the neighborhood – and all the drugstores, which seem to sell everything these days – and came up empty-handed.

I guess I could have trekked up to the Upper West Side, where I'd be more likely to see them, but I didn't think of it. I felt a little sorry for myself and a lot guilty as I headed to a bootcamp I was trying near the river; I knew by the time I finished it would be sundown. What kind of child was I that I couldn't even get a couple of lousy candles? (My mother liked the word "lousy" as an adjective, and so I deliberately use that word so I can hear her voice saying it.)

The sunset on the Hudson was glorious: A luxe deep red and orange that backlit the piers; colors so intense and rich they looked almost unreal. My mother loved the color orange.

The colors hovered in the sky – like they, too, hated to leave – for far longer than any other sunset I can remember. It wasn't me projecting: Even the instructor commented he couldn't believe how long it had stayed light.

I felt a strange push-pull: Alternately at least temporarily at peace in New York – and wishing I could call my grandmother to tell her. And then also guilty about my total lack of observance of Yom Kippur in the one place where it should have been so easy to do so.

As I walked home, I thought about how I don’t leave my apartment without wearing a piece of jewelry that belonged to each of them. How often I tell stories about them, or reference them. How daily I walk the streets of this city where my mother and grandmother spent so much of their lives and wonder if they have been on the very spot where I'm standing.

Am I walking in their footsteps? I'll never know. But I know they were here.