The Candle

Sylvia Dyal

February 2007

Reconnecting Sisters

It looks like a birthday candle, but that’s not its purpose.  My Japanese mother had been tsking and shaking her head ever since I started running and practicing wushu.  Each mention of an injury or pain to my neck, ankle, elbow elicited a murmur about “my age.”  To her these seemingly frequent injuries were signs of bad luck.  I shrugged it off; injuries are endemic to sports.  It happens.

When I re-injured my ankle, mom came to visit.  After picking her up from the train station, we head toward my apartment.  Zack greets us noisily at the door, glad someone has come to pet him.  As usual she unpacks her tote bag stuffed with old mail, coupons, “cookies for Zack”  (really chocolate cookies or candy for me), yellow Playtex gloves, and other goodies, spreading them all over my once empty counter in a haphazard array taking up all the available space.  This time there is something new.  Mom carefully unwraps a small ceramic cup, the kind that could be used for drinking sake or tea.  Next she unpacks a small brass candleholder.  After that she pulls out two matchboxes and a slim blue box of 140 two-inch white candles.

“Now what?”  I wonder.

“I want you to light a candle every day, put new water in the cup, and say a little prayer to Cindy,” my mother says, looking intently up at me.

I groan silently and try not to make a face.  Why do I need to set up a family shrine to my sister?  I’m not Buddhist, Shinto, or whatever.

“Cindy can watch over you, and maybe you won’t get hurt.  Do this for me.”

I make a half-hearted argument that Cindy was already watching over me, and I don’t need to do this ritual.  Inwardly, I wonder if this was mom’s way of getting me to pay attention to a sister I mostly ignored when she was alive and living elsewhere.  However, we don’t have those kinds of conversations.  Partly out of guilt and partly out of knowing mom wasn’t going to stop talking about it until I acquiesced, I set up the cup of water and candle holder on the counter and light it.  Later I switch the shrine to the kitchen window.

Now I could have easily just not lit the candle or not changed the water after mom left, but I did it anyway.  It was in essence a small request and easy to fulfill; it actually made me feel good that I was doing something for my mother.  When I remember, I light the candle when I get up in the morning on weekdays.  On weekends it varies.  No matter what time, however, even in the dark of the morning or bright sun of the afternoon, that candle gives out a powerful glow.  Especially early in the morning, the bright gold halo drives out all doubt and reassures me that I am neither alone nor lost.  Whether it is true or not, I like to think I sense Cindy’s presence nearby as I gaze at the candlelight.

My younger sister had cerebral palsy.  When we moved to California in 1969, mom found that she couldn’t take care of Cindy on her own so my sister was placed in a facility for the severely handicapped.  Over the next 12 years, she was moved to different facilities all over the Bay Area.  We didn’t have a car so our visits to her were infrequent.  It was rare that Cindy came home to visit.  I was involved in my own high school and college drama so it was an easy matter to forget that I had a sister.  We never talked, we couldn’t.  While she recognized us and was happy to see us, Cindy couldn’t communicate much more than pleasure and simple wants.  She couldn’t walk or sit without assistance.  There were no sisterly talks about boys, school or gossip.  We didn’t share clothes, makeup, vacations or camping trips.  It was only uncomfortable visits to an urine/chlorine smelling hospital ward, pushing a wheel chair around.  The only real evidence that we were sisters is a picture of us sitting together smiling on the couch with our arms around each other.  I was about four or five years old then.  But whatever we had ended when she died at 21 from a seizure.

I wonder what Cindy would have been like if she had been healthy.  Would she have been taller than me?  Would she have been a tomboy or a frilly girl?  Would she like sweet or salty snacks?  Would she battle her weight like I do?  Would she have found her career easily or struggle with it as I have?  Would I have nieces or nephews to spoil?  I’ll never know the answers to those questions, but it’s nice to believe that my relationship with my sister continues even if only in my head.  The warm light of the candle make me feel as if those years of indifference and selfishness have been forgiven, and I imagine Cindy smiling and laughing, telling me my day is going to be alright.  

This act of actively remembering the dead is strangely comforting.  Having this shrine in my house and having to administer to it makes me think about my sister.  It makes me think about the things I did and didn’t do.  And rather than castigating myself, I feel okay.  Silly as it sounds, I talk to Cindy as I light the candle and watch it burn.  This ritual allows me to believe that my sister watches out for me, and I like the idea of having my own little guardian. Did mom know the effect this candle would have?  I’m not sure. Did it stop the injuries she was worried about?  Not really.