Letters to Stardust

“The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core, under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made out of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself…

            So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that, yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up. Many people feel small because they’re small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars.” –Neil deGrasse Tyson

           

The last Christmas present that J.J. ever gave me was a journal with Bill Murray on every page saying, “You’re awesome!” I didn’t write a word in it before he died. I was afraid to document my life at that time, as he was getting progressively sicker. It was too awful to write down and putting it in ink felt like solidifying it—making it more real. It wasn’t until two days after he died that I wrote my first entry—a note addressed to him. In those first few weeks I was desperate to talk to him. His death made me feel silenced; the person who I told everything to was gone and there were so many things I needed to tell him that I couldn’t. It was unbearable.  I needed to keep telling him everything, and so that journal turned into letters written to J.J., because somehow he needed to know all of those thoughts that I couldn’t tell to anyone else. I needed him to know how my life was turning out.

            A couple of months ago I wrote my final letter to him in that journal. I filled up every corner of that last page, including Bill Murray’s face. I didn’t want to be finished talking to him. I know that I could always go and buy myself a new journal, but it’s not the same. I wonder who I would be writing to. Now it feels like I’d just be talking to myself. And so I just stopped writing altogether.  

I’ve kept a journal since I could write a sentence, until now always unconcerned by the fact that in essence I was talking to no one. And yet now, without J.J. to write to, the pen sits untouched in a drawer with no blank pages. Now the silence is a confusing thing. At times it feels like a blessing; if I can’t sort out my thoughts it’s okay because there’s no one to tell them to. But more often I struggle. My head is always full. At any given time I feel like a thousand thoughts are circling my brain and so after a while my fingers start to itch, looking for that pen. It can be too much, at times, to keep them all in. There is only so much space on the inside but the space on the outside is infinite.

There is a significant vulnerability inherent in sharing one’s mind with the world. Yet, most interestingly to me, it’s those moments when I’ve felt most exposed that I’ve chosen to share. I’ve always struggled with emotions face-to-face; if I’ve ever chatted with you about some of my most difficult experiences, chances are it’s been a fairly matter-of-fact conversation. Like a switch in my brain I turn them off so that I can say what I need to say without the interpersonal consequences of saying it. But I can write my heart into the words on a page and it flows out of me like water from that same tap that I keep tightly closed as I sit with you in-person. And so in-person the words are much less fluid and it’s those moments after we part ways that I really feel them.

            When he gave me the journal two Christmases ago, J.J. didn’t know that it would be the last gift he ever gave me. I’m sure that in my gut I knew it, and so in looking back, I think that journal terrified me. Yet, in knowing me better than anyone J.J. gave me something that I would desperately need when he was gone—a way to keep talking to him. If I couldn’t have kept talking to him I think I would have broken. For that time when he was still the only person I could pour my heart out to, he was still there for me. And so I wrote my letters to stardust.

            I don’t believe in god and I don’t know if I believe that there is greater meaning to life. But there is something ironically magical about the science of the universe. As another Christmas approaches where I’ll miss that special gift from the person who knew me best, where I don’t get to pick out that special thing for him, I hope that we get a clear night so that I can see the stars.