Lessons For the End of the World

Lesson #2: Candles Help

I don't know if you know this, but candles smell really good. 

They also aren't really a hot market item in the middle of the apocalypse, so when you're raiding a nearby Walmart, you can pretty much grab as many as you want and no one will care or fight you for them. They come in lots of cool flavors -- I don't know why more people aren't into collecting them. 

Here are a few flavors that candles can come in: 

Cinnamon Spice. Lemon Candy. Ocean Breeze. Vanilla Cream. Fresh Lavender. Blueberry Muffin. 

Or sometimes they have abstract titles, like an idea or a concept. "Bravery" (bergamot and citrus). "Compassion" (tea tree and eucalyptus). "Calm" (lavender and chamomile). 

There aren't actually any candles with titles that make sense to me. Sometimes I think about making my own line of candles, actually, and what I would name their flavors if I did. Maybe something like "Fear: cedarwood and cloves" or "Rotting Flesh." Another good one could be "Funeral: incense and camphor." Or "The Way Your Skin Gets Gooseflesh Right Before Ghosts Attack." Although that one is a bit long. I would have to trim it down, just for ease of marketing. I don't know if people would be interested in those sorts of candles or not. I think I would, even though they would remind me of hard days. 

The thing about candles is that they help you remember. I read somewhere, back when books were readily available and school was a thing you sent your kids to, that smell is like, the strongest of all the senses. The most linked to memory. I think that's why I like candles so much. Because I think it's important to remember, even things you don't want to. It is important to remember the way someone smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of their eyes. The color of their eyes. The sound of their laugh, warm and alive. The games you used to play together, on Friday nights. The way they held you when you had nightmares and couldn't go back to sleep. Or the taste of peanut butter. The way it got stuck to the roof of your mouth. The way you used to love thunderstorms, before the rain turned acid. Before the sky got dark. Before they took your mom. 

I try to remember, even when I don't want to. I try to remember funerals, names, faces. There are a lot of them. Too many to keep track of, really. But I write them all down in my book. Just in case. Just in case it matters, I guess. Just in case remembering helps them, wherever they are now. 

And I light my candles, even though the others think it's stupid. I light candles and I write and I think about how odd it is that someone thought the smell of "Bravery" was bergamot and citrus when I know that it's sweat and gasoline and shampoo, with a sharp hint of copper, of blood -- the smell that lived in my dad's green faux-army jacket. How they wrote "Compassion" -- tea tree and eucalyptus, whatever those are -- when they should have known that compassion smells like weak coffee, and strong spirits, and sometimes the smell of smoke and residue that lingers in the air after a gun has been fired. Straight into the brain, right between the eyes. Don't hesitate, don't shake, don't drag it out. Leave no room for error. And "Calm"? Well, I forget the smell of calm. But I think it might have been something like chlorine from a swimming pool, sour candy rolled around on my tongue, or the smell of old family photo albums. Dust. Smiling faces. An echo of what used to be. 

Candles are also good for impressing girls. If you're into that sort of thing. 

The main thing to remember about candles is that I don't think they were actually made with THE END in mind. But that doesn't mean they don't help.