IT IS 1966…

…and my grandmother is visiting. We have finished dinner. Plates are being put away.

“It’s yahrzeit,” she tells my mother.

“In the cabinet,” my mother answers.

My grandmother is a short, stout woman. She goes to the cabinet, but at her height, the upper shelf is out of reach.

“Jump up there,” she tells me.

I jump.

“See that candle?”

On the top shelf is a little glass, filled with wax. A wick sticks up from the middle.

“This?”

“Careful.”

What’s it for?

“Your grandfather.”

I jump down. I never met my grandfather. He died of a heart attack, after fixing a sink at a summer cottage. He was forty-two.

Was that his? I ask.

My mother puts a hand on my shoulder.

“We light it to remember him. Go play.”

I leave the room, but I sneak a look back, and I see my mother and grandmother standing by the candle, mumbling a prayer.

Later—after they have gone upstairs—I return. All the lights are out, but the flame illuminates the countertop, the sink, the side of the refrigerator. I do not yet know that this is religious ritual. I think of it as magic. I wonder if my grandfather is in there, a tiny fire, alone in the kitchen, stuck in a glass.

I never want to die.