When her father shot off into heaven in a silver spaceship – to find a new home for humanity among the stars – she was not there. She was not brought with the rest of us – her mother, her grandparents, and me (her uncle) – to Ground Control. Not even after we learned he’d made the decision to blast off anyway. At eight years old, she was too young to understand. That was what his note to us had said. Respecting his wishes they asked me not to tell her details and so… she won’t hear it from me. How he was noncompliant with directives. How he gave no opportunity for those who loved him to protest or say goodbye.
How it was never more than a suicide mission.
The night of the funeral, they wanted me to tell her a bedtime story – presumably one with a happy ending – but I couldn’t think of any. Not one that was true at any rate. And while I don’t believe it’s right to lie to the young, I do, however, believe that all things are true in their own way – no matter how fantastic. And so, I believe, in his own way he did it for her. Which, to me, makes him something of a hero.
And I’d like to believe that she hears it sometimes – in a subliminal signal stitched into the satellite TV or in the crackle of the neighbor boy’s walkie-talkies – the message sent back to earth, routed through Saturn, bounced off Mercury: There is no difference between the explosions that swallow planets and the explosions in which new ones are formed. This theory was confirmed by his last and perhaps most scientifically significant transmission – sent from the edge of the solar system just before he made the decision that there was no turning back. The asteroid field, the close proximity to the atomic instability of the stars – there was just too much damage to the ship.
Life support was disconnected. Heart failure, they told her, when they picked her up from school. And in its way, I suppose it was.
And I shouldn’t say this – I know – but there have been times when I wished I had the courage to follow him; days I felt like there were no further frontiers to find here on earth; days when the planet feels like it’s about to explode with all of the fear and sadness of being a grown-up – and that only by leaving this world could I somehow save it. Those days, I know I’m of no use to her – or anybody – so I try to keep it at a necessary distance. Still, I’d like to tell her (whether it’s true or not): That pulse in your wrist, that tapping in your chest—it’s a signal, he’s sending you a message from beyond the heavens. Look! In the night sky – a solitary shooting star like a tear. Off behind it, that cluster over there: He discovered it – named it – the entire constellation just for you.
Note: This story originally appeared in the Winter 2016 issue of Phoebe.