Second Glow

Little sweetheart, for years I have had a little glass candleholder cup that is just the right size for a tea light that I keep burning before a picture of you amongst your things and the hundreds of other photos of you here at The Shrine. For a long time it was in front of a picture of you taken by your mom in that park in SF that is high up on a hill where The Cliff House can been seen (not in this picture, but when one climbs up there, like you and I used to do sometimes, taking sandwiches from Roxies and having a little picnic).

That picture it at the base of the big full length mirror that I bought for you and now sits on top of the red table at one edge in the back, in the corner of the room. After I got hit by the car and came home from the hospital it was hard to get back over there, so I took a different framed picture of you - one you took yourself and sent me from your room in Carmel when you were doing “The Blue Room” down there, your red hair cascading all over - and set it up on the other side of the room by the speaker on top of the bookshelf because it was easier to reach in my hobbled condition.

Even though I can get around better now, I still like having your eternal flame there. Every time I pass I see it burning and when the tea light goes out, I immediately light a new one. I buy bags of tea lights at Bed, Bath & Beyond - where we went with a shopping list you drew up once when you’d examined my lack of baking equipment and procured everything we’d need. They come 100 to a bag and every month or two I go and grab a couple. I keep your light burning. Sometimes, if I’m in another room, I’ll smell the candle burning out and run to light a new one.

Lately I noticed two things. One is that sometimes when I light a new candle, a little black wisp of smoke from the match will trail off into the air in a spectral shape like a little soot-covered angel floating above the proceedings, blessing all.

And the other is that when the tea light is first lit, its flame glows wildly and then calms down to a very dim incandescence, before slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to grow and illuminate your picture, your beautiful face, brilliantly.

I stand there ever so watchful and mindful and prayerful. It makes me slow down and think about things, think about you, listen for your close counsel and presence.

In that second glow of the candle, I am reminded that although I can’t reach out and touch you just now, as I long to and once did, that you are near, that you haven’t gone away. But that like the tea light that honors you, you will come again and forever in that second glow if I just quiet myself and wait patiently. I will see. I will find you. I will know.

In the second glow, I will know. With faith and all my love forever.