The Probability Of Everything

YA fiction 

"BREAKING NEWS: MASSIVE ASTEROID ALTERS PATH,

NOW ON COURSE TO MEET EARTH!!!

NASA RELEASES STATEMENT 'DO NOT PANIC!  PRESS CONFERENCE TO BE HELD IN THIRTY MINUTES!'"

     Kemi, protagonist of Sarah Everett's The Probability Of Everything, is (like me) a big fan of probability.  Knowing the likelihood of a given occurrence helps her feel like her life is more predictable.  She's also really into research.

     One day Kemi is enjoying a rare treat--a Sunday breakfast with her whole family: her father, her very pregnant mother, and her active toddler sister, Lo.  Suddenly the headlines above scroll across the television 📺 screen.  The asteroid, named AMPLUS-68 (because of its size) has a 84.7 probability of striking Earth in four days!  

     Recall how you felt when COVID shut down the world and multiply that by about a zillion.

     Suddenly probability is not all reassuring.  But Kemi doesn't want to spend her last days drowning in grief.  She decides to make sure that her extended family will be remembered, that they matter.  So she's creating a time capsule with a treasured object from each member.  The book starts with this letter:

"Dear Reader,

     If you are reading this, then chances are that our world has ended.  I don't know what that makes you.  A survivor?  Or an alien from another planet, coming to pick through what's left of Earth the way raccoons dig through the trash looking through leftovers?  It doesn't really matter who you are.  All that matters is that you've found this.  All that matters is that you know we existed."

     As a child Everett lost a favorite uncle.  Only nobody talked to her about his death.  The grief she felt over his loss motivated her to start writing this book.  Then there was a string of hate crime murders of Blacks.  Their deaths became her asteroids.

     "I can't speak for the people who loved these victims, but I felt it was important to tell this story about a family living with the gaping hole of a missing loved one.  Both when grief is tied to injustice and when it is not, discussing death and loss is important.  We honor those we have lost when we talk about their lives, but it also helps us to move forward...Most importantly, we can honor those we lost by working for a more just world, by telling their stories, by making waves."

On a purrrsonal note, my hardest recent loss was the death 💔 😔 😢 of my beloved Joey Cat, my precious companion of sixteen years.  Right away well intentioned people were smothering me with platitudes and asking me when I was getting a new cat.  I knew that the kind of closure they were offering would erase the precious memories to anesthetize me.  I knew I'd rather feel pain that forget a great love.  Four years later the memories are clear while the grief is manageable.  Last night I was reading 📚 one of my 13-year-old journals.  Several times I read about nights I slept in the living room with Joey curled up sleeping on my chest.  I remembered clearly what that had felt and looked and sounded like.  Lynn Plourde, an author friend, says that while death stops a life it doesn't stop a love.  That's for damn sure.

Jules Hathaway 

     

     

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