Lighting Candles

 

A man and a woman in the book I'm reading are in an English Cathedral that had escaped Henry VIII's destruction. I don't know yet will they sleep together or not.

He hands her a coin to light a candle and she adds a flickering long white taper to the multi rows of other candles varying in length. 

The passage moved me, more because my husband and I never enter a cathedral without him giving me money to buy a candle to light for my beloved stepmother.

I am not Catholic. 

She was, but she separated from the church when she married my father. They were both divorced.

I was with her, when after my dad died, she was able to take Holy Communion for the first time in two and a half decades. She returned to our pew, tears streaming down her face. I felt honored to be there for her.

She never read the Ugly Step Mother Manual. In the years I knew her, she rebuked me once, the closest to cross she ever was with me. 

What did she say?

"I wish you hadn't put the iron away when it was still warm."

Before I moved to Europe, she spend many summers with me and a few Christmases in Boston. We visited places like Edna Vincent Millay's home. She showed me where she and my father had docked their boat in Camden, Maine. 

We played endless games of gin rummy during her visits to Boston or mine to Florida. What a card shark she was.

Eating out was fun, but what wouldn't I give to have her make a baloney sandwiches with potato chips for lunch.

There's a French Wheel of Fortune. Whether in Florida or Boston we watched it and Jeopardy together. I would love to tell her about the French version.

I invited her to live with me in Switzerland, but she didn't want to leave her home, even though she knew I couldn't take care of her in the same way long distance.

I lost her twice: once to dementia and once to her final death. Her grandson in California and I in Switzerland double teamed to make sure she was cared for. As a Navy veteran, she went into a Veterans Nursing Home. One Valentine's Day she was named queen. Unlike some victims of dementia, she never became nasty, only nicer if possible.

The housekeeper, who watched her before she went into the home, visited her at least twice a week to make sure she was okay. Neighbors who loved her stopped by to see her and reported back to me.

Sometimes when I called, she knew who I was, but I cried each time she said, "If you see Donna-Lane, ask her to visit me.  

There's a 14th century at the end of my street in my French village. Sometimes I will go in and light a candle for her, my own private memorial, my gratitude that she was in my life, a recognition of the faith that she held.