.
Rest In Peace, Stephen Hawking. You had a brilliant mind I always admired, and your theories were ones I always wished I understood.
But I guess I’ll content myself with your concept of parallel universes—parallel universes where the possibilities are endless, where I’m not where I am today, where I made countless different decisions. And each parallel universe may simply just be a pocket universe, where things are only slightly different, where the flutter of a butterfly’s wings doesn’t cause a hurricane. A place where I’m me, but also not me, not completely.
And maybe I’m just being emotional because you were someone he and I often discussed, when we were hanging out—we even wanted to watch the Theory of Everything together because we wanted to discuss it with each other. (And maybe in some parallel universe, we did.)
But life doesn’t work that way and the universe doesn’t work that way, and I guess what I’m trying to say is maybe, in a parallel universe, he sometimes thinks of me like I think of him. I don’t know. I can’t prove it.
But that’s the beauty your theory, I think. It’s comforting. A nice thing to imagine that somewhere out there, everything worked out for another J, one that isn’t me.
Anyway. Let your body return to the universe, let your bones disintegrate into stardust and take your rightful place back amongst the Cosmos. Thank you for the physics, the comfort, the romanticism. For a deeper understanding of the universe and the stars.