And they weren’t just characters of convenience, devoid of families, people with no personality apart from what I might need in a story. At the end of a day of writing, I thumbed through those books from the library and I read interviews with parents, friends, people who had known the victims all their lives. The students didn’t come out of nowhere — they came from homes and neighborhoods that mourned, prayed, lost sleep, wept, all trying to come to grips with grief.

Reading those interviews I felt ashamed.

Consider what an observer sees when an object descends into a black hole. For convenience, assume that the object is a burning candle that’s somehow tough enough to withstand the tidal forces of gravity around the hole.

As the candle falls, it takes longer and longer (from your point of view) for each particle of candlelight to climb the gravity well and reach your eye. Light particles emitted near the very edge of the black hole may take thousands of years to fight their way out to the universe at large. The result is that you perceive the candle falling for a potentially infinite length of time. Every now and then, another light particle struggles free of the black hole’s pull and reminds you of the candle’s descent.

It’s an obvious metaphor for grief. Hot and burning at the start, dimming over time... but even after many years, memory particles surface now and then to remind you of a life that’s gone.

I should point out that the candle’s infinite fall is only in the eye of the outside observer. A trick of the light. From the candle’s point of view, it drops straight down and crosses the event horizon without pause. Inside the black hole its flame may still be burning; it’s just that the light doesn’t reach the outside world anymore.

The next morning, Sunday, May 6, 1990, I reread what I’d written, wondering if there was anything that could be salvaged. I was struck by a new regret: I’d written about some guy named McGregor, not about the students.