MIT Police Officer Sean Collier honored at Fenway Park, August 28, 2013

Each year my experience of September 11 starts at some point in the month beforehand. Mine started in earnest a couple of weeks ago when my dad and I went to a Red Sox game, at which MIT Police Office Sean Collier was honored with his family throwing out first pitches. Collier, killed by the Boston Marathon bombers, seems to have been a fantastic human being, and his family always appear to be able to focus on celebrating his life. I was deeply affected by his loss among the Marathon bombings and their aftermath, and to have his smiling Irish punim on the huge display made me think, Oh my God, Fenway, what is it about coming here with my dad that you have to observe national traumas? It was a couple of years ago that we stumbled into a game that began with a ceremony about Osama getting killed, which figured in my first piece that explored Aaron’s loss.

Burns clean, no mess, great customer service: the perfect mourner’s implement! 5 stars!

The next morning, I woke up and realized, “f@ck, I need to buy a yahrzeit candle.” Jews light a 24-hour candle on the evening before the anniversary of a loved one’s death. So I had a very this-is-how-we-live-now experience of going to the Amazon site on my phone, checking out the candles, and wondering, as I bought some, what it even means to have customer reviews of the paraphernalia of mourning.

I thought that writing an Amazon-style review of the yahrzeit candle might be the seed of a poem. But happily for me and the unwitting Amazon users who might have seen something like that, I ended up being inspired (poetry-wise, in part by recently passed Seamus Heaney, Paul Celan, and ‘ol Adrienne Rich, plus The Kinks) to write something that looks at this benign but terribly lifeless object as the means for remembering all of the life Aaron had with me and others. The poem is at the end of this post, and here.

The weather the past few days has been the same bright, clear, cloudless pattern that so strongly evokes that day twelve years ago. But this afternoon summer has come back in, and the memorial service that my mom and Amy will attend tomorrow in Boston will be hot and humid…”9/10 weather,” you might say. The girls are all in school this year (!) and will come home after lunch tomorrow to share some memories and photos of Aaron with me, Amy and my folks. The yahrzeit candle is burning with a pretty strong paraffin smell, as though we were awaiting a hurricane. Not exactly the blank sensory canvas for one’s memories one might expect, though the light flickers nicely and the glass doesn’t feel like it will set the house on fire while we sleep. Three stars?

Aaron and Dad on Compo Beach in Connecticut, c. 1985

——–

How did this shot glass

So recently shared

Fill up to the brim

With cheap wax and wicking?

 

If memory serves,

This sticker says burn

All day and all night,

A “Girl—I want—to

 

Be with you” chorus.

But the mouth on this—

Its strained, perfect O;

A Day of the Dead

 

Spun-sugar skull, but

Wiped of its friendly

Smile and eye-sockets—

Seems hardly ready

 

To breathe out a song.

It waits to take in

What the fine print says

Is praise of God’s name:

 

To crisp up the words

In this modest flame

And add to the peace

Of Heaven. Oh, blessed

 

And honored—I’ll drain

The milk of those words

To this cup’s bottom

Today, and the rest

 

Of the year, I’ll drink

Something muddier,

Raising to life with you

As if it went on.

 

Copyright © Josh Jacobs 2013