It Is Better to Light a Candle Than to Curse the Darkness (Two Doors and a Window, Part 6)

“Two Doors and a Window” is a series of essays that I wrote in 2020.

When my mother died, I was in the room. When my father died, I was on a plane.

When my mother died, I was 29. When my father died, I was 43.

When my mother died, she was a mystery to me. When my father died, he was my friend.

I am thankful for their stories and for their charms. I am overwhelmed by “what ifs.” In the uncertain times I am living through right now — COVID-19 all over the world, a second Civil Rights movement in the U.S., a treacherous president openly threatening to sabotage the next election — I don’t want any more uncertainty to have to accept. But I think one of the greatest things that Meryl left me was the idea that it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. It’s something that’s been variously, incorrectly attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt and Confucius, but in fact its first corroborated sighting is in the work of an obscure preacher. Regardless, it washed over me as just another of her platitudes when I was a teenager, crying at the kitchen table over friends’ treachery and the boys who didn’t like me. But it has snuck up on me in recent months, as I text my friends to see how they’re doing every day, create activities to keep my laid-off husband’s mind working, and share enlightening articles and political actions online instead of bemoaning the state of the world, which, as we all know, deserves all the bemoaning it can get. 

Harv liked to say that he gave up on technology when, as a kid, I beat him at Ms. Pac-Man. Though he died in 2015, he never had an email address. Meryl, on the other hand, would have loved Facebook, social as she was. Though I’ll never know what that would be like, I suppose it may actually be easier on the psyche to get to know your parents as adults once they’re gone, because at least you’re spared those social media posts. So now, perhaps, every time I think to myself something like, “Complain all you want about your mothers. It's better than nothing,” I need to remember that as a candle I can light against my own darkness. And I need to remember the people who brought me to where I am, and try to be that person for others. I like to think it’s what Meryl would have done.