For the past three years, I had been dreaming of seeing the total eclipse of April, 2024. It would be my first and quite likely my last chance to take in this type of amazing celestial event. When you’re young, you think there will always be more chances. Not so. With age comes urgency.
The next eclipse to cross the continental United States will be in 2045, and I’ll be 80 by then, if I’m still alive. And even if I enjoy that type of longevity, who knows whether I’ll have the eyes to see or the mind to marvel? The finality of it all made this eclipse feel all the more important to me. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity writ large.
Because of that, Dear Husband and I reserved a cabin in Pontiac, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. This would be right in the path of totality, yet away from the madding crowds. I invited friends and loved ones (26 of them, all told) to do the same. I had even originally rented a 5-bedroom place to accommodate those who wouldn’t be able to afford to come otherwise. Such was the depth of my desire to connect with all of these amazing people, before we are all permanently parted by the passage of time.
Mortality can feel awfully cruel when you shift your focus away from how much it increases the value of your life experiences. The older I get, the more acutely aware I am of the finite amount of time that is left. That, in turn, makes me want to create unique memories with people that I love. It’s my only chance at immortality. Memories will last long after I’m gone.
I had high hopes for this eclipse. In the end, only Dear Husband, his wonderful cousin, and his cousin’s equally wonderful partner stepped up to share the experience. (Thanks DH, Bob, and Emily!)
In fairness, most of the others that I had invited had very legitimate excuses not to attend. Adults have lives, after all. Some were on the other side of the planet, so a trip such as this wasn’t feasible. Some have health issues, and some are just feeling their age even more than I am. It’s funny how our horizons seem to shrink as we age. I hope I manage to resist that gravitational pull. The world is an amazing place.
This event wasn’t going to look the way I had hoped and dreamed that it would look. That was disappointing. It was hard to bear witness without feeling a boatload of sadness and loneliness and harder still not to dwell on opportunities missed. I did struggle with that. More than a few tears were shed that day.
But in an effort to set that all aside so as not to ruin the entire occasion, I did my best to focus on this present, miraculous moment. We had brought along a telescope, but you’d be amazed how hard it is to even find the sun with a telescope when you have a sun filter on it. We brought a disco ball as suggested by god-knows-whom, in an attempt to make hundreds of reflections of the eclipse, but that, too, was an abject failure. We let the sunlight be filtered through a colander, and that worked to some extent, but it didn’t have the wow factor that I was looking for.
Thank goodness we also had eclipse glasses. With those, I just sat back, looked up, and tuned in to nature. And ultimately that was all I needed. The planet itself was giving me more than enough wow that day. We did covenant, the cosmos and I. I felt like it was watching me and it was waiting to see who blinked first.
Beside me was a bush that was teeming with buzzing bees. I don’t fear bees as many do. I have formed a live and let live relationship with them, so we have a harmonious kinship. Their humming was hypnotic. It almost put me to sleep. (Wouldn’t that have been tragic after all that planning and dreaming and anticipation!)
As the eclipse slowly progressed, I could feel the temperature dropping. The light didn’t so much fade as it became otherworldly. It had this hazy quality. It was like nothing else I had ever seen. Sounds seemed to become more muffled, as they do after a heavy snow.
As more and more of the sun was obscured, the earth became very still. Just before totality, the bees stopped buzzing. It was like they were holding their collective breath. They would not speak up again for about 15 minutes.
Suddenly I felt very small in the face of these two celestial bodies coming into alignment. I have never felt so much a part of the overall scheme of things, and yet so delightfully insignificant, in my entire life. I gazed in awe at the vastness of the universe. It was a miraculous few minutes.
Yes, we were plunged into darkness. Yes, we saw a corona and a diamond ring effect. Yes, the stars appeared. Yes, unfortunately, someone was shooting a rifle into the sky somewhere not far from us, because, you know, the Ozarks. (What an exercise in futility!) But it did not dampen the wonder of it all for me.
I’m sure thousands of people took better pictures of the eclipse than we did. They’re all over the internet. No pictures can do it justice, though. Some beauty defies capture.
And yet I can’t seem to get past it. Oh, how I wish more loved ones had shared this monumental memory with me! It was life-affirming and profound, but it could have been epic. But for that one moment, as the sun and the moon danced their cosmic tango, time seemed to stop and nothing else seemed to matter.
Regardless of regrets, when I look back at the eclipse of 2024, I will always have this very personal, precious gift: the unforgettable silence of the bees.
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