By Torger Vedeler

Shadows of Totality

Illustrated by Lannie Pihajlic

It is a hole, an eye into the past and future. That’s what my friend said, and I believe him. I also know that others may not agree; to them an eclipse is only an event in the sky, just planetary circumstance, just that most unlikely of cosmic events. The moon is its size, you see, and the sun is its size, and their placement so perfect to grant us this. Many millions of years ago, the moon was too close to let the corona be seen, and some millions or even billions of years from now it will be too far away.

There will be no total eclipses then, not like the ones today.

But is such accuracy the only thing that really matters? Because I was also there, standing on the line of its shadow, watching with special glasses to protect my eyes, hearing a woman nearby give a breathless countdown, second after second, until… until… then.

Totality.

It all really began some years before.

His name was Bill, and he was my friend. I don’t quite know how our friendship started; who ever does? You may recall your first meeting, something the two of you did together, some fun you had, but when did you know, really know, that this was more than just an acquaintance? Friday nights became regular, when he was off work and I was off work and it just began, first with enchiladas and then with pizza. What did we talk about?

I don’t remember. But I do remember that we talked, and that we laughed, and that it was good. We saw that it was good.

You don’t notice at first, and then you do. It’s a bright day, no different from a thousand others, until what you know will happen begins to happen, because that perfect day will suddenly change. Astronomers have predicted it with their science, right down to the second as the shadow passes over you, and they have their explanations. The moon will block the sun, leaving you in darkness. But the scholars cannot explain other things that come with this, things the animals know.

It starts to grow cool, and the birds react. Their songs change, each distinct and each unfamiliar. It is evening but not evening, not right. Can you hear these songs? With your protective glasses you look up, and there it is, a slice taken out of the sun, the moon claiming hegemony, only for now, only for this time.

Bill got sick. Cancer. I didn’t know, Bill. I was away for that one year and I didn’t suspect. I thought things would be forever. A friendship, a good and true friendship, should be forever, shouldn’t it? I remember before, how you always carefully blew your smoke away from me and out the open car window when we drove, maybe wanting to protect me, or just out of courtesy. Your one vice, and the only foolish thing I ever saw you do.

So I wasn’t there at the end. My own life had intervened. I couldn’t sit with you in the hospital and say goodbye.

The birds are uncertain now. You can still hear them, asking why, wanting to understand. Why is the world the way it is? Why do things happen the way they do? We could tell them, I suppose, with our science and our knowledge, but do we really have the answers?

Perhaps the birds know something that we do not.

It’s dark now, and growing darker. Still I look up, seeing the crescent through my protective glasses, knowing… knowing… waiting….

There! The flash, glasses off for these few brief moments, the protection and the barrier not needed. I am safe and you are there.

The most important thing.

In the sun and the moon, in the black place at the center of the halo, in the awe that has no words but simply takes my breath away, you are there.

“Bill?” I ask.

Yes.

“I’m sorry, Bill.”

Sorry? What do you have to be sorry for?

“I wasn’t with you at the end. I didn’t know….”

That I was sick?

“Yes.”

That I would die?

“Yes.”

A smile, your gentle, eternal smile, invisible but real within the perfect circle of blackness, surrounded by the perfect halo of that part of the sun we never see, the corona.

We all die, my old friend. I went too soon, yes. The cigarettes, poison. Foolish.

For a few of those precious seconds of totality I grow silent. “We all miss you,” I manage. “You were so important to so many. Things just aren’t the same.”

Things are never the same. Each new second is its own eternity in the great dance. I know what you are thinking, that if only you had known, that we could have had one last time, one last evening, one last joke, one last trip out for pizza. Yet there would still be a hunger after that, wouldn’t there? Because we are friends. We will both always want more time together, more laughter, more of the good company. But the good things are also eternal, outside of time itself. That we had them cannot be undone.

The eclipse stares down at both of us, on us, a brief, transient moment that I want to go on forever.

“I miss you,” I tell him again. Tears roll over my cheeks, each giving a tiny reflection of the corona we so rarely see. Bill is still wearing that unique smile.

I know. I miss you too. It’s all right.

“Why now?” I ask. “Why do I see you now?”

His old chuckle. The eclipse, he says. Maybe because this is the transient instant of eternity when the walls come down, all of them. And so this is when I can come to you and you can come to me. But at all other times, remember that I am still with you.

“There isn’t much time,” I tell him. “Totality ends soon.”

Yes. But I have learned that totality is also forever if you choose the right place to be. Somewhere in the universe, there is always totality: a planet or a moon blocking a sun in just the right way, a place behind worlds and suns and so in a place beyond them. There is all the time, and there always will be. Remember this and remember us, together.

I try to speak but cannot. Now there is no need and there are no words, only the perfect corona of our unending friendship.

THE END