The Truth About Shooting Stars

It's been six years since I republished this piece. Dad's shooting star was more than 16 years ago. Where has the time gone? He would be 102 years old today on 4 December 2018. I made one small change to this and am republishing it in his honor. I've been through a lot these last several months. I wish he were here to tell me everything is going to be OK.
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My dad would be 96 years old today (12/4/12). In memory of him I reworked a piece about him that I wrote some time ago and I'm republishing it now. The picture on the left is really within a few hundred yards of where the following story took place. I  shot this picture when I visited the Mackinaw River on my trip back to Illinois this fall. It was the first time I'd been back there in more than 35 years.
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"Time to head back, I guess," Dad said as he stood in the dark on the sandbar and scanned the river bank with his light. "Now where the heck was that path we made?" We were night fishing for catfish on the Mackinaw River in Illinois. It was an adventure we shared a couple times a summer. We'd caught some fish and it had been good. I was about 10 or 11 years old, I suppose. I wish I could remember it better now.

Finding the path we'd made sliding down the steep bank in order to get to the river, he turned to me, "I'll go first then give you a hand up." I shined my headlamp on his face and I could barely see him grin. "Batteries are almost dead. Guess it really is time to go."

He turned and scrambled up the ten-foot bank like a cat, even with arm loads of fishing gear. Looking up I saw his light and then his hand appeared above me. "OK, your turn." I climbed up the bank until I could reach his hand and the next thing I knew I was standing on top.

"You take the minnow bucket. I'll take the rest," he said turning away from the river and starting to walk through the stinging nettles that were taller than he was, stomping them down to make it easier for me. I picked up the bucket, its thin wire handle digging deep into my kid-soft palm. I followed him and used the bucket to knock the remaining plants out of the way. After several steps we came to the track on which we'd driven to our camp farther up the river. It was only a barely car wide strip of knee high grass dividing the river's meander from the cornfields beyond. Two dirt tire tracks marred the grass in each direction.

We walked out from under the trees along the river and stood in the middle of the track. Dad looked up at the clear sky and said, "Turn out your light. I always love this."

I turned out my light just as he turned out his. We were momentarily plunged into black. I couldn't even see the dirt road anymore. The tall corn stalks with their waving tassels whispering to our left were only dark silhouettes against the lighter black of the sky. Then I saw them: more stars than seemed possible. More stars than I'd ever see again until decades later standing in the pitch black sand dunes of the Egyptian desert. In Illinois that night, it was like no sky I'd ever seen. The river valley focused the starlight like a telescope. The Milky Way looked as though someone had smeared a paintbrush of white across the center of the sky. The constellations stood out in sharp relief. There wasn't even a moon to dim the spectacle. I wondered: Can you read by starlight alone? 

"Wow. That's a bright one." I said pointing.

"Must be a planet. Maybe Venus? The stars twinkle and the planets don't, I think. The only stars I know are the Big Dipper and how to find the North Star. Just follow the ends of the Dipper from bottom to top. The next bright star you see is the North Star -- always points north." I followed his pointing finger.

"Not very bright," I said.

"Nope, but when you're lost it's bright enough. Ho!"

A light streaked across the sky -- a shooting star -- a long, thick, bright one that raced through a third of the sky before silently winking out.

"Your grandma used to say, 'Someone just died' when she'd see one of those," he said.

"Is that true?"

"Nah," he started to say then paused before going on. "Well, sure, actually. Someone's always dying somewhere. And someone's always being born. That's just the way it is. It's a cycle. No one gets out of this world alive. You just live and do the best you can do. Eventually you die, and someone else takes over."

He looked at me.

Many years later when it was time for his shooting star, I held his hand in a hospital room watching him die. I remembered standing under that glorious sky with the stars and planets looking down on us. It helped.

But that was thankfully a long time in my future. We stood for a while in silence waiting for another shooting star, but none came. I was secretly glad. We walked to camp with our lights off. He carried the bucket.