Do you know what mortals have in common with the stars in the sky?
TW: grief
Have you ever seen a star die?
As a child, I loved to gaze at the sky. I fell in love with the clouds that painted the infinite morning blue, and I saw dragons, fantastical creatures, bunnies, and even myself in them.
But the celestial vault when it darkened and gently turned blue was my favorite.
One special night, I decided to go and watch the stars. I lay on the damp grass, the cool air filled my heart, and above my nose, a sheet of sparkling stars unfolded.
That night, I decided that That One was the most beautiful star of all. It appeared to me like an iridescent jewel, like a crystal glass speaking only to me. I dedicated a song to it and lost a couple of hours, enchanted by its radiant light, dancing in harmony with its other celestial companions.
The lives of stars and the lives of humans have many things in common. A star can die slowly; there it is, shining in the night: radiant, then flickering, it starts to fade, coughs, until one day it's gone. These are called white dwarfs in cosmology.
These gentle souls fade away gracefully, fading like the last note of a celestial symphony. They complete the cycle of their lives and, when they feel ready to go, they dive into the afterlife. They extinguish naturally, like the flame of a candle when the wax runs out.
When a star dies, and when a human dies, they never completely leave the universe. The remnants of a dead star can remain in the universe for billions of years, floating in space, becoming other dancers in this eternal dance that is the universe.
Similarly, when a loved one dies, they never completely disappear. Their memory is the eternal legacy we carry in our hearts, and their soul continues to shine. There will always be a piece of them in us.
But then, there are other kind of stars.
More rarely, instead of fading gently over time, a star becomes charged with extraordinary energy, shining brighter than any other visible star or planet, and it explodes.
It explodes and creates what's called a supernova. During this phenomenon, the dying star releases an enormous amount of energy into space, evolving into massive black holes, wells where the curvature of spacetime becomes infinite.
I was fifteen when I witnessed a supernova. The death of a star that leaves not just sweet memories but a deep, profound black hole where time and space twist in an unsettling embrace, where stars and light are lost in its relentless abyss. Where everything is darkness. And pure chaos.
I had just come back from school, my mother was driving me back home, I was clueless in the passenger seat. And then.
“I need to tell you something. Something really bad happened.”
Time froze. Supernova. No more seeing. Blinding light, then utter emptiness. My father was no longer there.
I touched my chest to see if my heart was still beating. Silence.
When my father was suddenly torn away from me in that supernova of my life, it felt like a fragment of my heart had been captured by a cosmic vortex, soaring among the clouds I loved to watch so much.
But even when a star dies, the Earth continues its eternal dance. The universe never stops, and in its timeless harmony, pain becomes a part of us. Like a shadow that follows us, pain teaches us to embrace it and live with it.
One day, though, we will all reunite in the One that is the universe, and there, in that eternal and endless dance, stars and humans will come together again. Death will become just a step in this extraordinary cosmic symphony, where every note is a memory, and every star is a soul.
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