As I entered the room where my wife’s fam­i­ly was sit­ting shi­va for her broth­er, I was star­tled by a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed sound. 

Laugh­ter.

Only days removed from the funer­al, we were all still reel­ing from David’s death. The scant pas­sage of time had done lit­tle to blunt the pain. Yet there were my in-laws, smil­ing through tears as they sat on low chairs in a crowd­ed house, sur­round­ed by neigh­bors and friends. Some­one had just shared a well-worn sto­ry of boy­hood shenani­gans — with David play­ing a star­ring role, of course — and the mem­o­ry was a bea­con that guid­ed us to hap­pi­er times.

“Because sad­ness and joy can be togeth­er, like a can­dle in the dark.”

Years lat­er, I wrote this line while think­ing back on that impact­ful moment. The threads for what would even­tu­al­ly become my children’s book A Flame Burns On were begin­ning to coa­lesce in my mind, and they all cen­tered on this seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry idea of laugh­ter in the midst of mourn­ing. For me, those sparks of remem­bered joy dur­ing the sev­en days of shi­va were essen­tial for the heal­ing process. And over time, I came to real­ize that the light of mem­o­ry does not dim, just as our love for the deceased does not fade. 

That’s what I find so pow­er­ful about the year­ly rit­u­al of light­ing a yahrzeit can­dle on the anniver­sary of a loved one’s pass­ing in the Hebrew cal­en­dar. On the day we com­mem­o­rate the loss, we also rekin­dle our con­nec­tion to the lost. The steady flame of the can­dle is a com­fort­ing reminder that the peo­ple we love con­tin­ue to touch our lives, long after their phys­i­cal depar­ture from this world. For my wife, the can­dle illu­mi­nates cher­ished moments col­lect­ed over a life­time of shared sib­ling expe­ri­ences. And for our chil­dren, the can­dle is a per­pet­u­al invi­ta­tion to ask for ​“just one more sto­ry!” about their leg­endary Uncle David.

In a broad­er sense, I feel strong­ly that there can always be more sto­ries — par­tic­u­lar­ly in the realm of pic­ture books on the sub­ject of grief. Death and mourn­ing can be dif­fi­cult top­ics for read­ers of any age, let alone the youngest. The scarci­ty of such sto­ries in the children’s sec­tions of book­stores and libraries reflects an anti­quat­ed belief that books for kids should not be sad, because tragedy is too much for them to han­dle. I saw first­hand the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of this approach, when I searched for books to help my son process the loss of his uncle but came up empty. 

Thank­ful­ly, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is chang­ing. In recent years, pic­ture books that address uni­ver­sal life events such as the loss of a fam­i­ly mem­ber have become far more com­mon. Jew­ish pub­lish­ing espe­cial­ly has seen a pro­lif­er­a­tion of these books, many of which shed light on time-hon­ored tra­di­tions of remem­brance with­in Judaism. This year alone, read­ers will be able to learn about sit­ting shi­va in Some­thing Sweet by Lesléa New­man and Sari­ta Rich, an unveil­ing cer­e­mo­ny in I Wish That You Knew by Rebec­ca Gar­dyn Lev­ing­ton and Alyssa Rus­sell, and a yahrzeit can­dle in A Flame Burns On by me and Carmel Ben Ami. And this fol­lows last year’s release of The Remem­ber­ing Can­dle, anoth­er won­der­ful yahrzeit can­dle book by Ali­son Gold­berg and Seli­na Alko.

In a pub­lish­ing envi­ron­ment that is chal­leng­ing (to say the least) for Jew­ish sto­ries of any kind, the fact that we’ve seen gains in this small but vital niche is a cause for cel­e­bra­tion. By cre­at­ing sto­ries to help chil­dren process the real­i­ties of life, authors and illus­tra­tors like those list­ed above are doing their best to fan the flames of empa­thy, com­mu­ni­ty, and resilience in the world. 

As the pub­li­ca­tion of A Flame Burns On approach­es, I feel grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trans­form my mem­o­ries of my broth­er-in-law into a sto­ry for a wider audi­ence. It is yet anoth­er exam­ple of how David’s lega­cy con­tin­ues to bring light to those around him. For while the idea of writ­ing this book was part­ly moti­vat­ed by the need to fill a space on the prover­bial book­shelf, in truth it was borne from the same impulse sym­bol­ized by the very act of light­ing a yahrzeit candle.

To keep a person’s mem­o­ry alive.