There’s a small glass sitting on my counter right now, holding a flame that will burn for 24 hours. It’s a yahrzeit candle — a simple, quiet ritual that marks the anniversary of my mother’s death. I’m not religious. I don’t belong to a synagogue or follow a set of observances in any formal way. But I lit that candle, and I’m sitting here watching it flicker, and I can’t stop thinking.
That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do, I suppose.
What a Yahrzeit Candle Is — and Why It Matters
The word yahrzeit comes from Yiddish, meaning “year’s time.” In Jewish tradition, you light a yahrzeit candle on the anniversary of a loved one’s death. The candle burns for a full 24 hours as a living symbol of remembrance — a small, steady light held up against loss.
You don’t have to be deeply observant to feel the weight of it. The act of striking the match, watching the wick catch, and letting that flame breathe through the day carries something real with it. It’s a marker. A pause. A way of saying: this person mattered, and I haven’t forgotten.
I light it because of my parents. Because of my family. Because some traditions carry meaning even when they don’t come wrapped in doctrine.
My Mother at 72
My mother was 72 when she died, after a long illness that had been chipping away at her for years. She was a polio survivor — tough and resilient in the way that people who survived real hardship tend to be. But as she got older, polio returned in a different form. Post-polio syndrome hit her body hard: her ability to walk, to breathe, to manage the basic mechanics of daily life all became a fight. She was depressed about it. Of course she was. But she was strong-willed in a way that kept her moving forward, even when I didn’t know how she managed it.
On top of that, she battled severe asthma. And then there was the autoimmune disease — a condition that took a long time to even get a name. It suppressed her immune system so completely that if someone near her had so much as a cold, she would catch it. No question. She had to be careful in a way most of us never have to think about. Every month, she went in for gammaglobulin infusions to help her body do what it couldn’t do on its own.
She carried all of that and kept going. That part of her I admire more than I probably ever said out loud.
The Daily Calls I Took for Granted
I used to call my mother every single day. Sometimes we talked about nothing — whatever was happening, whatever crossed our minds. It didn’t always matter what we said. What mattered was hearing her voice.
But here’s what I didn’t understand then: I took those calls for granted.
Now I talk to my own kids nearly every day, and I love it. But sometimes I catch myself wondering — do they love it? Do they know yet what it means? Or will they only understand after I’m gone, when they’re sitting somewhere watching a candle burn and wishing they’d paid closer attention to the sound of my voice?
I think about that more than I’d like to admit.
She Was Complicated — and So Was I
My mother wasn’t easy to define. There were times she was so loving, so supportive, that I felt completely held by her. And then there were other times when I genuinely didn’t know who I was facing — moments where she said things I still won’t repeat. Things that cut.
She picked favorites, though she’d never admit it. My sister Lori was her girl. My brother, as the only son, had his own special place. And me? I think she saw my independence as a sign that I didn’t need as much. Maybe she thought I was the strong one, the one who could handle being overlooked. She wasn’t entirely wrong about my strength. But you can be strong and still need to feel chosen.
There were times my sister and mother would align against me in ways that felt like a wall going up. Those moments shaped me — not in a way I’d wish on anyone, but in a way that made something clear: if I was going to succeed, it would be because I built it myself.
The Uncle, the $50,000, and What My Parents Taught Me About Money
My mother’s brother reached out to me recently. We haven’t been close — since he married and started his own family, our contact has been sparse, and it usually surfaces only when he needs something. I gave him money once, knowing I’d never see it back. I did it anyway, because I remembered who he was to me growing up. He helped my family. He even bought me a flute for the school marching band — a flute I eventually passed down to my daughter.
But when we spoke this time, he told me he’d just gotten over pneumonia, that his teeth were falling out, and that he needed $50,000. His solution? I should win the lottery and hand it over.
I didn’t say much. But I thought about my mother.
She used to tell me, make a lot of money so you can take care of your father and me. And I did. I showed up. I flew to Florida every few months to visit, even when those trips wore me down — even when something my mother said would land sideways and send me home feeling smaller than I arrived. I was there. I built something so I could be there.
What I Built — and What It Cost
The independence my family circumstances forced on me eventually became the engine behind a PR firm I built from the ground up. Every slight, every moment of feeling like I was on my own, quietly contributed to a drive I couldn’t have manufactured any other way.
But nothing is uncomplicated. The firm survived real blows. 9/11 changed everything about the business climate overnight. Hurricane Sandy took more. COVID rearranged what was left. After weathering all of that, I knew I needed a different direction — not because the work wasn’t good, but because the version of me who built that company had been through too much to keep running in the same gear.
The Candle Keeps Burning
So here I am. The flame is still going. Twenty-four hours of light for a woman who was infuriating and tender and brave and occasionally impossible. A woman who survived polio and fought her own body for decades, and still managed to pick up the phone when I called.
I’m not religious. I don’t have a congregation or a prayer I recite on this day. What I have is this candle, and a quiet space to let the memories come without editing them.
Because grief doesn’t ask you to remember only the good parts. It asks you to hold all of it — the love, the hurt, the complexity, the things left unsaid — and let the light burn anyway.
That’s what I’m doing today. Holding all of it. Letting it burn.
P.S. Her actual death day was June 1, 2012.