On the first phone call Mark ever made to me when sight unseen he was going to ask me out on a date, he told me that there was a full moon that night and I needed to see it. I told him I would be sure to do that after we hung up and he said, “You have to look at it now. Put the phone down and run outside and then come back. I’ll wait.” I found that to be a little odd – his insistence that this couldn’t wait as if the moon wasn’t going to be there after I hung up. It was the first look I had into his deep love and curiosity of the world around him and how he could not rest until he shared it with others.
Several months after his death I started going to my neighbor’s house every Wednesday night. I found out from another neighbor that we were both watching the same show on Netflix and since her husband had band practice, we started watching it together once a week. A diagnosis of MS had changed the trajectory of her life and sudden death had changed the trajectory of mine. Sometimes we caught up on whatever we were watching, sometimes we caught up on neighborhood news. Other times we sat in the silence of our own swimming thoughts.
On the dark walk back after leaving her house, when I dreaded going into my own empty house, I’d always look for the moon. “You’re just on the other side of that,” I’d tell Mark which sometimes felt right there if only I could find a high enough ladder. At other times clouds obscured it and the outlook I had on my life and it ever getting better would plummet into another heaping dose of despair.
A week ago four astronauts in a spaceship started circling our moon and on Monday one of them announced that a crater, so bright it stood out among others, would be named for the deceased wife of his colleague. I’m not sure if it took my breath away because it was the moon of all things or because somebody said, “I see what’s missing here. I see how you don’t have her to share this with so I’m going to include her on our mission.”
While moving things out of the house last month, I found the brown manilla envelope that contained the letter Mark wrote hours before he died. I hadn’t read it in a while and the anguish within those two pages is beyond words. Also in that envelope was a copy of the eulogy his dear friend, Joe, wrote and read at his funeral. Two scientists who stumbled into each other at a university medical center and hitched their wagons together. A few days ago, I texted Joe about finding what he’d written and said, “I’m so glad he had you all those years.” He wrote back that he had also recently reread his words and that it made him miss Mark acutely.
Four scientists on a space ship introduced us to Carroll, her husband, her daughters, and now the crater named after her. Earthside, a scientist who worked with my husband confirmed for me what I had hoped was still true – that he is missed. Time and love have propelled me into a new life and I have haphazardly learned how to move forward, but I have never forgotten to run outside to look at the moon and whisper thank you for all those nights she kept the light on for me when everything seemed impossibly dark.
