Lessons in Service From the Love of My Life

[Transcript]

I don’t want to talk about my professional life or my qualifications. They’re interesting, and I’m doing some cool work — but that’s not what matters right now. I want to talk about how I learned about service, and to do that, I need to talk about my love life.

In my twenties, my love life was a mess. Truly a mess.

And for those of you of the male persuasion who complain that young women go for the sexy, dangerous, unreliable types — yes. That was me. Those were my choices. They were fun, but it always ended badly.

So when I turned 32 I thought, that’s it. I had a good job, a good life. I moved my grandmother’s ring to my ring finger and decided I was marrying myself — or my work. No more men.

And then I got a postcard. This was before the internet, before social media. The postcard said: “Dear Rebecca, I think I found the man you should marry.”

Right then the phone rang. A quiet, gentle voice said, “Um… I’m looking at a postcard that says I should call you.”

So we went on a date.

He was an astronomer — actually one of the most highly cited astronomers of the 20th century. On our first date (because academics do this sort of thing), I asked, “So… how many papers have you written?”

He said, “Oh, I don’t know… about 365?”
I had written eight. I nearly got up and ran.

But he was a good man. A really good man. He even had a quasar named after him — the Huchra Quasar — and he discovered something called The Great Wall of the Universe. I had never heard of it either.

He studied the distribution of galaxies and the whole thing looked like a stick figure — like a human stretched across the sky. He thought he’d made a mistake because the universe wasn’t supposed to look like that. But it was. Then he published it, and it made the front page of the New York Times.For six months he probably knew more about the structure of the universe than any human being on the planet.

But that’s not the part of him I want to talk about. I want to talk about the kid from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who worked his way up by sheer grit and brilliance.

He was the first man I ever dated who required no games. If he said he would call, he called. If he said he’d take care of something, he took care of it. It was simple in a way that felt miraculous.

We got married. In 1995 we had a son — Harry. His name was John Huchra. When I went into labor, he brought more stuff to the hospital than you could imagine: pillows, blankets, a huge portable radio (portable only if you had a small truck). He was 45 and never thought he’d have a child. He was endlessly, incandescently happy.

We raised our son. We both came from what might politely be called “crap childhoods.”

Mine: British upper-middle-class parents — not a lot of hugging.
His: first-generation Polish immigrants — also not a lot of hugging.

So we poured all the love we never got into our little boy. And it was glorious.

If you’ve had young children, you know the drill: watching the same movie night after night. I must have seen The Incredibles a hundred times. But those moments — the three of us, warm, safe, a family — those were the best moments of my life.

Years passed. Harry grew. We got him into high school. My career took off. And the marriage became… well, like some marriages do. Good, solid, routine.

One day, I had a business trip in Paris. I called home. We talked about whether he’d pick up the dry cleaning. I flew to London, picked up my mother, and brought her to Boston for Columbus Day weekend. We drove home.

And there he was.
61 years old.
Massive heart attack.
Gone.

Three things came from his death.

First: I learned I had not paid enough attention. The love of my life, who loved me with his whole heart for sixteen years, had been right beside me — and I hadn’t always noticed. I turned away at times. I took things for granted.

So when my second husband walked into my life ten years later, he said, “You seem awfully kind.”

And I told him, “If love ever came back into my life, I promised myself I would be nice to it.”

Second: I learned there are things worse than death.

When someone dies suddenly, people tell you everything. A woman in the school parking lot told me her husband had physically abused her for twelve years. A colleague said, “Oh yeah, my father dropped dead when I was four.” There is so much hidden suffering. There are things far worse than death.

Third: I learned what service really means.

My husband died of overwork. He didn’t just publish 600+ papers. He would fly from Harvard to Los Angeles to speak to a high school class about astronomy. He spent a Christmas in Mexico City helping a struggling doctoral student with her dissertation. We fought about this, actually — the giving, the giving, the giving.

But I am so proud of him.

A few years after he died, I asked our son, “How are you doing?”

Harry said, “Mom, I think I have more of a father than many of my friends whose dads are still alive.”

He was the most loving man I have ever known.

And I am here to tell you: There is almost nothing better in this world than giving and giving and giving — than being in service.

And I will be forever grateful that I was his wife.

Thank you.