One Star At A Time

August 24, 2025 8:25 a.m. 

I wake at 3 am and lay still for 20 minutes, hoping to fall asleep again. The river has run dry from the drought and with the water almost gone, I hear nothing other than a solitary barred owl calling from deep in the forest. Usually I can hear the fast moving currents of the river around the island behind the house. Most often I can hear loons or echoes of ducks in the estuary. I think of the trout, the pickerel, the gaspereau, the eels, the birds, the muskrat, the beaver, the river otter. I think of the countless forms of life that rely solely on our beautiful river. I have been away from here for almost two weeks and, in that time, the waterfalls up river have vanished. Nothing is left of their presence but the enormous brown rocks that form the fast-moving eddies and pools that the kayakers and fishermen like so much. This climate catastrophe deeply frightens me. It is hard to imagine the future devastation that we are in for. There is no sleep for me now.

 I rise and, in the dark and quiet, I fill the kettle to make coffee. I may as well do something, I think to myself. Rhubarb stirs and she comes over to me, sleepy, tail thumping softly against my leg. I know, girl, I say, I know. What in the world are we doing up at this time?! I take my mug and we go outside and sit on the porch. Her warm body leans fully against me. The sky is full of constellations and the Milky Way shines bright: a luminous, candy floss-like swirl of gas and dust and old, old stars, some 100 billion of them, suspended right above me. I lean further back and the Perseid meteor shower gives us one last show. As Earth passes through the debris of Comet Swift-Tuttle, stars fall from the sky so numerous that I count them out loud. One, two, three! There's another one! Five! Six!

I quietly sing that wonderful line from one of my favourite songs: I see the constellations reveal themselves one star at a time. I smile and think of John, my brother. He would have been 61 three days ago. I look up and say hello to him, as I always do whenever I see a shooting star. John Andrew Hawthorn Brown. I say his name out loud. He is the ghost in my family. The presence no one speaks of but me and my children. They lovingly refer to him as Uncle John, bestowing him to his rightful place in our family. They do not know him as the mischievous 7 year old boy as I do. They only know him as their only uncle. 

I write letters to John in my notebook whenever I have something important to tell him or whenever I have uneasy feelings that are difficult to share. I tell him that his short life and death determined the shape of my own life. I speak of my children and now my grandchildren. I remind him of our childhood games and how much he could make me laugh. Instead of a funny 7 year old boy with dark, thick-rimmed glasses, I like to imagine him now as a grown man. He is a pediatric doctor with Doctors Without Borders and I give him advice on looking after himself whenever he is away. I tell him that the white rabbit is my soul animal because they remind me of him. I tell him that I think of him and hope he thinks of me too. But mostly I tell him I love him and I miss him.




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