Notes, Rabbi Andy Bachman’s blog, is a thoughtful, spiritual and sometime spolitical place, where Andy, who is the rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim writes about many of the things that interest him. Here he describes the five yahrzeit candles in his house and who they are burning for.

My father, whose temper flared in his children and grandchildren, long after his flame was extinguished on a cold March day in 1983?

My grandmother, whose lovely but depressed soul joined her beloved in the ground on a frozen January morning in 1979? Whose legends of milky kugel and being babysat by Golda Meir adorn the imaginations of my own children?

My grandfather, whose legendary generosity with medical patients during the Great Depression and beyond befuddled his aforementioned wife, whose book-balancing always found an admirable yet confounding loss in his hesed?