burning

At the funeral home they gave us shiva candles. Dad lit his candle when we got back to his house after the funeral, but the rabbi told us we should light ours when we got home. A shiva candle is a tall thin glass with a plain white candle in it. It burns for seven days.

Right now my candle is quietly burning away on my stove downstairs. Every time I walk through the kitchen I see it. It sits there gently flickering and steadily burning down. At first the candle made me feel kind of panicky. I thought it was burning too fast and wasn't going to last the seven days. But now I think the candle just burns faster in the beginning and slower towards the end. Then I thought about all of the poetical flickering life burning down/ wick/candle in the wind lyrics I could write.

I don't really know what to feel about the candle. It offers me no comfort. But it does have a very strong presence for something I don't have to feed or water or let out to pee. It doesn't make me feel less gypped. I worry about the house burning down.

I wonder if I am supposed to be magically healed when the candle goes out. Or maybe I am supposed to stand up and shake off this funk at the end of seven days. I could pretend that everything is ok once the candle goes out. I guess. I just don't know what it means. Maybe I want someone to tell me how to feel.

Things are not okay right now. Grandma is in the hospital. She had a skin tear on her leg that didn't heal and ended up today with a fever, an infected wound and it turns out cellulitis and a pretty serious blood clot in her leg which is preventing blood flow to that leg.

This leads me to think that maybe mom is calling grandma over to the other side, and I feel comfort in that thought because seeing mom again would be a very pleasant surprise for grandma. Also, my grandpa is over there, and so is grandma's brother and her first child who died at age 2 1/2. It sounds like a fun family reunion, no? When I came home from mom's funeral and ran over to the nursing home to see grandma and realized how very out of it grandma was, she had no idea how long I was gone for, I just saw that grandma wasn't really in grandma's shell anymore. And right now I do not feel sad when I think about maybe losing grandma, I feel at peace with it because I imagine grandma in a better place.

I had to call the scumcle and let him know what was happening today. I hadn't planned on talking to him so soon. He did not go to see grandma in the hospital because he said, he slept all afternoon. He said he couldn't sleep enough since the funeral and that sounds like depression to me. I hope he is depressed. I really do. He has a lot to be depressed about. He messed up his relationship with his sister, and everyone else on this side of the family. At least being depressed proves he is human.