Stardust

There’s a tool astronomers use to classify stars. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram catalogs stars by their size, temperature, luminosity and longevity. Reader’s Digest version:

• Supergiants: Up to 1,500 times larger and 1M times more luminous than our sun. Typically short-lived, terminates as a supernova/black hole.
  
• Giants: up to 100 times larger and several thousand times more luminous that the sun. Longer lived. Typically ends as a nova/neutron star or pulsar.
  
• Main sequence stars (including the sun): roughly same size and luminosity. Longest life. Ends as a white dwarf, cooling and dimming over millions of years.

A few weeks ago, I was searching for pictures from the 1970s to go with a blog about former interests I no longer pursued. Somehow, I stumbled onto obituary pix from people of that era; most looked like senior yearbook photos. These were people who were only a few years older or younger than me. Intrigued, I started reading.

Some trajectories were spectacular; their obits were 7-10 paragraphs long. They had received doctorates in their field. Heavy with honors conferred by their peers and professional associations, it appeared that they had achieved everything…and then some…they had dreamed of as young people.

Most were less spectacular. One woman had spent her life as a hairdresser. She lived in, retired and died in her hometown. Survived by husband of 40-ish years, a few kids and grandkids. Others included a barmaid, a department store employee, a cashier.

Same for the men: a mechanic, a carpenter, a truck driver. Worked at the same place their entire lives, either leaving behind or pre-deceased by a spouse, survived by a few kids and grandkids.

As I looked at the faces from 40 years ago, I thought about them, that day, the day their picture was taken. What was on their minds that day? Perhaps they had a new love interest, besotted with the crazy intensity that only comes when you’re a teenager. Maybe they were wondering about the prom, sports and tryouts, a fight with their parents.

Some died tragically young. One girl didn’t even scratch the surface of adulthood. Her obit mentioned very little, and no charities were listed that might have given a clue. I googled her and found she had been murdered in 1984, at the appallingly young age of twenty.

But whatever their story, it was all moot now; like the Carpe Diem scene in Dead Poet’s Society, their thoughts, even if they recalled them, died with them.

What made them unique? What separated them from their peers?

I would venture to say little.

We’re all born with our life clock already ticking, our time set. We look around, surveying the landscape, seeing where we fit in. We jockey for position, perhaps at the expense of others, struggling to rise above, to achieve. But ultimately, it all comes crashing down as soon as our pictures and bio appear on the obit page.

Certainly there are gifts and abilities that make us unique. Some are worked at/improved upon over a lifetime; others are squandered. But even though some may be perfected to the highest degree…a neurosurgeon, a first-chair soprano, a best-selling author…we, like the stars, eventually come to an end.

Some of us are supergiants. Less so, giants. Most of us are just humdrum sun-type stars, living and dying in obscurity with only a grainy obit photo and a granite stone to say we were here.

But the basic things, the things common to us in every culture, in every country remain the same. We all want validation. We all want love, immortality. On a cosmic scale, there’s little that separates us.

“We are stardust,” as the song goes. And it’s true. The iron we all carry was forged in the crucible of supernovae, which eventually drifted to Earth.

If we are the stuff of stars, can we do any better than them?