A candle for the forgotten
Today is Remembrance Day for those who passed away in Poland. It’s called “Wszystkich Świętych” or “Dzień Zmarłych" which translates literally to “All Saints' Day” or “Day of the Dead" While it’s a religious event, I still participate in it every year.
There is this tradition where we buy “świeczka dla zapomnianych” - literally “a candle for the forgotten.” One extra candle for a gravestone that has none or only a few. I think that’s a lovely symbolic gesture of kindness for those who are forgotten. Just reading their name and lighting a candle for them is, in a way, bringing them back for a second, even if we didn’t know who they were. This gesture expresses the belief that no soul should be left without remembrance. It is kind of a symbolic act of solidarity between the living and the dead. It’s not really an official ritual, but a deeply human and emotional custom rooted in polish catholicism and culture.
But for me, the act of leaving a candle on an unlit grave carries more weight than mere symbolism. Leaving a candle for those who are forgotten is a quiet way of saying “no human life is meaningless,” even those who are forgotten. It’s an act of ontological mercy - granting light, and therefore presence, to a being who otherwise would remain in darkness, both literally and symbolically. In that moment, the candle burns against forgetting, with a tiny fragile light, unwilling to fade.
There’s also a subtle defiance in it. Defiance against time, memory, and being forgotten. It proclaims that even those erased by history deserve a moment of light shed on them.
Human dignity does not expire with memory.
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