Candles in the Dark

 

I dreamt I was a young boy, walking in the woods along a narrow path, walking through the dark. I was with my little sister she was holding my hand as we walked. She looked to be about 4 or maybe 5 years old. I was a little older, a good bit taller,  perhaps about 8 or 9 is my best guess. The path beneath our feet seemed  familiar. The night was a little cold, not a biting cold, but a cold that spoke of winter yet to come. Two little children, wearing what looked like clothes fashioned from old blankets, walking in the cold. I remember feeling very alone walking along, I do not remember a moon on that night, We were walking uphill through the trees in the dark, the cemetery was just outside our village on top of a low hill. 

We had loved our grandparents. Both of our grandfathers had died over the summer from a plague, and soon after my father’s mother had died too from the plague. Our other grandmother had died years before I was born, she had been killed by a soldier who had come to rob their chicken coop, she had tried on her own to fight him off but he hit her and killed her. I had only heard the story, I had never known her. She had passed many years before I was born, her name had been Levka and my sister was named after her. 

My sister Levka was a happy little girl, she rarely cried and never complained. She had been a happy baby and was an easy person to like. She was almost always happy (except for now, of course, mourning our grandmother). She hda always seemed somehow older than her years.She could be very quiet and had often had a far away look in her eyes, especially now, since our grandparents had died. She had grown a little quieter, a bit more thoughtful. She seemed older than her scant years would lead you to expect. 

We each carried a small paper bag with a few pieces of candy in them and I had two candles.The candy wasn’t for us, it was a gift for our grandparents now lay in the cemetery, we wanted to give them a gift for Hanukkah to share our candy with them, especially Levka, she missed them terribly. We had two candles our mother had given to us,  they would go on top of the grave stones. We were told to give them with the attendant, who my father knew well. He would take them to the graves of our grandfathers. Father didn’t want us wandering around in the cemetery in the dark, and we could never find the graves on our own. 

We walked up the hill and saw the outline of a man standing at the edge of the graveyard. He waved to us and we walked towards him, barely able to make out his face in the darkness. All we could see was the shape of his head and his tremendous beard. 

“You children must be careful walking in the dark like this, it is a mitzvah, what you are doing,” he said and held out his hand for our gifts. We each reached in our pockets and took out the tiny bags of candy. I took out the two candles and the attendant struck a match to light them. We stood in the candle light and I went to hand our little bags over to him to put them on the gravestones.  We lit the candles our mother had given us and handed them over to him. 

I recognised him then, and remembered him as a friend of my father. He asked us if we knew the dates they had died, I asked him why he needed to know to which he responded, 

”There are so many who died this past year, I remember your grandparents Solomon, they were very good people, it is nice you are here to remember them tonight. So much loss, the plague took many, many people all over Europe and Russia,” then he turned just a little and bowed his head. 

I heard a soft, almost muffled sound next to me and I realized  my little sister had started to cry.

At that moment, as he had asked us for the dates, a cold rain began to fall, not hard but just enough to make the night feel darker and colder. The candles we had brought  started to flicker and wave in the breeze and my little sister started to cry, she moaned softly, almost a whisper saying, “Tata will be so mad at us. I don’t remember the dates they died,” and she hung her head softly sobbing. 

I thought of him then, of our father. He had a job working deep in the earth, in the coal mines up in the mountains. Our grandfathers had worked there as well. Father only came back every few months so see us, it was a long journey back to our tiny village. This time it was different though, he had returned to us feeling very sick and had been growing steadily sicker the past few weeks, he coughed and coughed, He hadn’t felt strong enough to  make the walk up the hill to the little village cemetery. 

So he sent us as his representatives, tiny ambassadors to the dead. In a dark part of my mind I wondered if we wouldn’t be visiting him here soon, if they wouldn’t be making a place for him among his ancestors. But I brushed the thought aside, I didn’t want to upset my sister anymore than she already was. 

I put my hand on her shoulder, “Don’t cry Levka, I remember the dates”, and I took our little crumpled bags and wrote the dates on there with the tiny pencil nubbin the graveyard worker handed me. 

“It will be ok, stop crying, it is ok,” and I gently patted her back. We handed our candles to the man, still lit,  along with the little paper bags. I remember the bags were made of crumpled brown paper, very small with only enough space for a few tiny pieces of candy, which was all we had anyway. Still we wanted to share our candy with our grandparents, we missed them so much. Especially Levka missed them, the grandfathers had both dotted on her and grandmother had too. 

As the grave attendant took our candles the light fell on my sisters face, the moment I saw her face, illuminated for just a moment out of the darkness I remembered, I remembered that this was a dream,  I remembered who I was ...having this dream. I remembered who I am in this life I have now, and I remembered who’s face it was I saw ...as our candles were carried off into the thick darkness surrounding the gravestones. 

I remembered the shape of Levka’s face as I rose up into awakening, I remembered where I had seen it before in this life. As I slowly awoke into the darkness of a rainy dawn, back in this time, I remembered that face. The face that I remembered , the face of my little sister Levka in the dream. I wrote to her, the owner of that face. She is an old friend I knew from when I was a child. Funny that I should remember her so, we have barely spoken in 50 years. I could only wonder at the intensity of the dream. Maybe it was true, that we knew one another, in another life, in another place, a dark place that left a mark upon the souls of two young children lost in the dark.

(I shall keep the identity of this person secret, they know who they are, that is enough)