Some experiences don't stand the failings of memory

What's almost as bad as not experiencing something?

How about experiencing it and not remembering?

From the time I was a little kid, I knew that Halley's Comet would pass within view of Earth exactly once in my lifetime. The comet gets close enough to see with the naked eye once every 75 or 76 years.


Some folks are lucky enough to see it twice. My grandmother saw it as a teenager in 1910 and then at age 90 in 1986. My daughter Pauline saw it when she was 6 years old and if she's fortunate enough to live into her 80s, she'll see it again in 2061.

I suppose if I live to be 112 ...

Nah, not just for that. My body is decrepit enough that it'll fall apart way before then. Sort of like the "One Hoss Shay," the poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes about the carriage that lasted 100 years and a day.

Halley's Comet, 1986

The thing is, I don't remember seeing it in 1986.

I was working in St. Louis in February of that year, the time the comet was supposed to be visible. When I looked it up today, I realized that its position on the other side of the sun was the least advantageous to be seen in the last 2,000 years. And for much of its flyby, it was not visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

NASA did plan a mission to observe the comet from space. Sadly, that mission -- launched on January 28, 1986 -- ended 73 seconds into the flight with the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Mark Twain

Why write about this now? I guess it's just that whenever I hear Mary Chapin Carpenter's wonderful song "Halley Came to Jackson," I think about it. I also read recently that great American writer Mark Twain was born in a year the comet passed Earth (1835) and died the next time it passed in 1910.

I've seen wonderful things in my lifetime. I've been in the caves at Lascaux and I've stood on the Great Wall of China.

I suppose I've even seen Halley's Comet.

I just wish I could remember it.