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Lighting a candle is common way to remember a lost one's life, so I decided to explore this in poetry and prose for April's radio show.
The Candle by Catherine Turner
A candle burns bright in a window of gold
A candle burns bright in a window of gold
A beacon for life's weary heart
Promising beauty and splendours untold
Of a world that now keeps us apart
We travelled the path of our lives side by side
But this path you walked on your own
To a world where no pain and no suffering reside
While I stay in this world alone
So darling please tend to the candle for me
And nourish the flame lest it dies
Till the day when its radiant beauty I see
And it guides me at last to your side
Paul Alexander “Light A Candle”
And I will light a candle for you
To shatter all the darkness and bless the times we knew
Like a beacon in the night
The flame will burn bright and guide us on our way
Oh, today I light a candle for you
The seasons come and go, and I’m weary from the change
I keep moving on, you know it’s not the same
And when I’m walking all alone
Do you hear me call your name?
Do you hear me sing the songs we used to sing?
You filled my life with wonder, touched me with surprise
Always saw that something special deep within your eyes
And through the good times and the bad
We carried on with pride
I hold on to the love and life we knew
In the Winter in Fairbanks, Even the Light Comes Late to Class by Nicole Stellon O'Donnell
On Monday in December the sun rises at 10:40. Red sky. Black clouds.
Among all the slouched backs, curved necks, and notebook-scrawling hands,
only one student notices, a girl, the one writing about the room in which
her mother died. She says, I have never seen a sunrise like that, and twenty-eight
other heads look up from their pens and notebooks. I had never and will
never again read a description of a hospital bed like the one she was writing
at that moment. Years later, she will email to ask if I have that piece she wrote
about her mother, and I will have to tell her I don’t. But this morning, neither
of us can foresee this future small grief. So I stop class while all twenty-nine
line up at the windows to watch the light. Fifty-eight eyes open out onto
snow, the parking lot, the shovel-scraped sidewalk, red brake lights, dull
frosted stop signs. Red sky and burnt clouds. This morning, deep winter,
sunrise comes, hours late, long after the tardy bell and without excuse.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Charles Bukowski
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
After Glow by Helen Lowrie Marshall
I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an after glow of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
Of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun
Of happy memories that I leave when life is done
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