Reflections on the 10th Anniversary of my Father's Death; Or, Of Grief and Gravity
What is the most terrifying thing in the entire universe? The answer to that question depends, of course, upon what one is terrified by, and that differs from person to person. For me, though, nothing quite matches the cosmic horror of the black hole.
The shiver induced by the thought of a region of darkness so dense that it can swallow up even light itself—well, that shiver is an incomparably cold one. Black holes: where gravity is so crushingly powerful that all of our conceptions of time and space are made irrelevant, so much so that a “cosmic censorship hypothesis” was advanced to protect us from the breakdown of knowledge itself. Black holes: where the entire edifice of known science, even the laws of physics, is smashed to pieces by the unknown. Black holes: the cosmic graveyards of light and comprehension.
Can you hear that snicker at the heart of the singularity? That’s the darkness laughing at the feeble attempts of our ape brains to understand the universe. Poor, stupid monkeys, the snicker seems to be saying—there is no escape from the all-consuming darkness.
The fate of one unlucky enough to find herself being pulled towards the event horizon—the point past which no escape is possible—depends upon the size of the black hole in question. If it is small, which is to say a few times larger than our Sun, you will be torn apart by gravity before you reach the event horizon. To survive to the event horizon, you need a much, much bigger black hole, one whose gravity will act uniformly on your body rather than quickly ripping your lower half from the rest of you before you get there. Says Stephen Hawking: “[I]f you want to explore the inside of a black hole, make sure you choose a big one.”
Is this consolation? Are supermassive black holes less terrifying, being more survivable (at least to the event horizon) than smaller ones? Alas, no. For beyond the event horizon—who knows what you will see? One thing is almost certain, though: you might make it inside a black hole, beyond the event horizon, but you will never live to tell anyone of what you saw, for the gravity of the singularity will mangle you beyond repair.
Imagine a huge cylinder of a spaceship, hundreds of miles long. Imagine it stuck near the event horizon, its engines screaming against the immense gravitational grasp of the black hole. Eventually, the engines will fail and the ship will fall into oblivion. But this is a well-made spaceship and it carries a lot of extra fuel, so it is able to hold on for years, decades even. At the ‘top’ end of the ship, furthest from the event horizon, time will pass more quickly than at the ‘bottom’ end. This is a particularly dramatic instance of time dilation, for the sheer strength of a black hole’s gravity can warp spacetime like little else in the universe.
But perhaps there is one thing more terrifying than black holes: loss. The loss of loved ones. And is such loss so different from the black hole? The nigh-inescapable pull of grief, dragging one down, forever. However long ago one experienced loss, the pull of grief can always be felt, just as a black hole’s gravity can be felt from afar even if you are able to generate enough power to flee from the event horizon. Loss can be a ‘small’ black hole or a supermassive one. Sometimes it is strong enough to shred you into nothing before you even pass the despair horizon. Sometimes one is pulled beyond the despair horizon toward a psychological singularity where everything you are is pulverised and pulped—and then you become someone else’s loss, a black hole in someone else’s life. Even if it doesn’t destroy you, remember that the black hole of loss is always there, always grasping and pulling. Remember that its gravity can always be felt.
Black holes and loss: both upend space and time, both throw everything you know into chaos, and both can annihilate you utterly, in ways otherwise unimaginable. That’s what loss is. That’s what grief is. A black hole. A personal black hole. And so we are back where we started: black holes really are, however imagined and on whatever scale, the most terrifying things in the universe.
It’s just a couple of days away now: the tenth anniversary of my dad’s death. Ten years. Ten years! Ten! Impossible…and true.
See what I mean about loss and black holes? I was 17 when he died—when he died far, far too young. I was a child, also far too young to experience the awful truth of death, and my universe imploded. I experienced my own bespoke singularity. His death overthrew everything I knew and everything I was. And ten years on (ten years!), I feel like I am at both the ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’ of that black hole-bound spaceship.
When he died: the shock and the shudder, the pull of the despair horizon at its strongest. After: I learned to live my days at the top of the ship, with life marching on day by day. But always: the grief pull, growing weaker all the time, of course, but never disappearing (and it never will). I didn’t fall beyond the despair horizon, but I spent a lot of time at the spaceship’s bottom, and every so often I find myself teleported back down there, where time is a sluggard and the grief pull is strong.
I realise I’m mixing my images somewhat, but then that’s what black holes do: they make a mess of things. They make things incoherent and unknowable. They play capriciously with the laws of physics and the health of the mind. Time and space and identity, all playthings for black holes both cosmic and personal.
Sometimes it feels like it really has been ten years, or longer, and sometimes—most of the time, at least when I explicitly think about it—he has only just died. I am long past the stage of reflexively thinking he’s going to walk through the door after work as he did every day, but the black hole still scrambles my sense of time. Actually, it makes more sense to say that I simultaneously feel that it has been a long time and no time at all since he died: such nonsense does the black hole make of time.
My dad was flawed in some important ways, but ultimately he was a good man. Above all: a man utterly committed to his family. To me. I can barely hope to live up to his standards of decency in this sphere.
I have changed, and my life has changed, a lot since he died. I wish he had been there to see me through some milestones. So much remorse for things done and said and so much regret for things not done and not said. I think, though, that he would be proud of me, on the whole.
Ten years, though. Ten years…
In the cosmic shiver urged on by the thought of the black hole there lies beauty, too. This is grandeur of the grandest sort, and that we understand so much about these horrifying things is a testament to human intelligence and imagination.
Yes, black holes will snicker at our blankness in the face of the singularity, but let’s not exaggerate our ignorance. We have indeed discovered a great deal about black holes and much else besides—the circle of ignorance has grown smaller by the decade. Eventually, even the singularity will yield, and then the circle of our ignorance will itself collapse into meaninglessness, a pathetic version of a black hole, and one to be snickered at in its turn.
Inside a black hole, would one see all of time? Would one end up being spat out into another universe rather than crushed by the singularity? All terrifying, yes, all very terrifying, but also beautiful and majestic, I think. And that is some consolation.
And then there are white holes. These theorised opposites of black holes are said to be impossible to enter, but they can emit light and energy and information. Perhaps at the end of every black hole, there is a white hole. Light at the end of the tunnel indeed…
As for personal black holes: their grief pull is inescapable, their despair horizon always menaces, however distant it is, and nothing is ever the same again after one has been up close and personal with them. And yet, what if (cosmic) black holes do lead to other universes? What if they even create them? Highly speculative as such theorising might be, we can apply it to the human level. Loss is a black hole, but loss does not have to mean the end of everything. The memory of the loved one can be a white hole to set against the black hole of their absence.
For example, it can inspire one to make better choices and to live up to the standards set by the departed—that is, to make them proud. Loss is a wound, a gash, a black hole, but it also creates a new reality, and whether that reality is good or bad is ultimately our choice. One would prefer to live without the black hole, of course, but that is a childish wish.
Grief and gravity are necessary for the universe to exist as we know it and for us mere apes to live as we must live. They are part of the fabric of the cosmos and of the human condition. Learning to accept this might be nigh impossible, but it is the only option. Never forget the ‘bottom’ of the spaceship, never lose sight of the despair horizon, and never wish to be free from the grief pull that, after all, binds you forever to the ones you have lost—but do not be consumed by them, either.
Embrace the white hole while accepting the black hole. That is to say: feel the loss, for grief is human, but also bathe yourself in the light of your memories of and love for the lost. Create new universes, emit light and energy, and scoff at the despair singularity. This is the only way to live—and to honour those who no longer live with us.
It was once believed that nothing whatsoever could be emitted from black holes. But here is Hawking again:
…black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly to another universe.
So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.
The black hole information paradox is not quite solved yet. But it looks as though nothing is ever truly lost, despite the best attempts of these cosmic devourers. In any case, it is probable that black holes do emit radiation, whether or not information is preserved. So it is with the personal black hole: the loved one lives on in you. And perhaps that is the key to resolving the personal information paradox that is loss.
What will survive of us? Philip Larkin (almost) knew: love.
Love: the white hole, the Hawking radiation of our unceasing griefs, the brilliant and redeeming glint in the deep, deep dark.
Postscript: A Couple of Personal Cosmic Tales
From my personal website:
The website icon is the famous Pale Blue Dot picture of Earth taken from a long way away, and the main website image above the site title is of The Day the Earth Smiled, another picture of our planet taken by a distant probe. To me, these images are vindications of humanism and reason, as so beautifully encapsulated by Carl Sagan’s immortal words on the Pale Blue Dot.
The latter picture is also of personal importance to me. My father and I, shortly before he died in 2013, looked up from our beloved St Andrews pier as it was taken. If I recall correctly, I also had my telescope with me, but I wasn’t very proficient with it and the conditions weren’t great in any case. Still, I, perhaps we—memory fails me on the exact details—tried to look up, telescopically, at the time. We certainly looked up with our naked eyes at least. This was during our last trip to that beautiful place, so the photo may well be the last picture of us together. The Day the Earth Smiled was also the day my Dad and I last smiled, too.
Another personal cosmic tale, since we’re on the subject. Around the same time as that final trip to St Andrews, my Dad and I had our names and messages added to the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which launched in 2014 on a mission to a nearby asteroid (that asteroid, I have just read, is ‘potentially hazardous’ to the Earth). The craft reached the asteroid in 2018 and returned the samples it took to Earth (by parachute) in 2020, before heading back off into space to investigate another cosmic rock. For at least a few years, our names and messages were floating about in space—some of the time near an asteroid that may well kill a lot of us one day. But let’s not be too pessimistic. Here are our messages:
My message: ‘For whom it may concern: hello, greetings and well done.’
Dad’s message: ‘God Bless Danny, Aileen [my mother], Sasha [our dog, now passed away] and all my family. 12/07/13.’
I have the certificates to prove it (though the asteroid’s name has been changed since 2013). I’m not sure if our messages returned to Earth in 2020 or whether Hayabusa2 is still carrying them through space. If the latter, I hope it’s not too cold up there. If the former, it was quite a nice final trip for me and my Dad, I think.
The intertwining of the cosmic and the human, of the epically remote and the intimately personal, represented by these two cosmic tales is, I like to think, an echo of what Sagan meant in his reflections on the Pale Blue Dot. Yes, we are tiny specks of carbon living on a tiny and unimportant rock in the grand and terrifying blackness of a cold and indifferent universe. But we are also evolved and conscious beings who love and dream and wonder, ones capable of understanding the universe’s beauty and terror, and so the darkness cannot touch us.
Notes
The first Hawking quote is from his Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018).
The image of the spaceship desperately trying to escape the pull of the event horizon comes from a Doctor Who plot (series 10, episode 11 to be exact).
The second Hawking quote comes from his 2016 Reith Lectures.
“What will survive of us is love”—from Larkin’s poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’ (1956).
The section of my personal website containing my cosmic tales can be found here.
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