Lighting Candles for Children

Elizabeth Uppman

This coming Sunday, December 9, is the Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting. From 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. in every time zone, people will light candles to honor children who have died, creating "a virtual 24-hour wave of light." It's believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe.

My family first participated in the Worldwide Candle Lighting in 2000, to honor my son Gabriel. What I chiefly remember about that first year was how my 9-year-old nephew wouldn't stop playing with his candle. We had bought scented votives, one for each family member, and had placed them in glass holders like tiny globes spread out across the dining-room table. My nephew tilted his candle to make the wax run, tipping it and twirling it until the inside of his globe was coated with wax and soot. All around him, the family murmured about Gabriel, how brave he was, how resilient, how sweet.

Worldwide Candle Lighting

At one point during these murmurings my nephew looked away suddenly, as if to avoid a slap. It startled me. I noticed how hunched his shoulders were, how heavy his head looked. For the first time I wondered what it must be like, to be 9 and to know your cousin is dead. I imagined, for the first time, what he might be thinking: Would they say those things about me, if I were the one? Would they say I was brave? Would it hurt?

This year will be our eighth Worldwide Candle Lighting. My nephew is in high school now, and probably too busy to come. I'll miss him. It would have been easy, at 9, to exchange his candle for the television in the next room -- to leave us to our grieving, to act as if nothing had happened. But he didn't. I'm grateful for his patience that first year, for his uneasy faithfulness to a global ritual.

Elizabeth Uppman

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Pictured above: David Ramos Ocasio of Cidra, Puerto Rico, daughter Bianca (left), and niece Aeris Rivera remember David's brother Alex, who was robbed and murdered while at work in the family business in 2004. They were among 500 who gathered in Parque Central in San Juan, Puerto Rico during a Worldwide Candle Lighting service. Photo courtesy of Tristan Reyes.