Charity Woodrum

The newer generation of stars form out of the ashes of the old generations of stars.

And so I'm actually studying that dust, that stardust, or the ashes, if you will, in those early, early galaxies.

Yeah, I'm a NASA postdoctoral fellow there.

Yeah, over eight years.

Yeah.

At first, grief is like crushing, I would say.

And you're learning to carry it, but it crushes you.

And as time goes on, you're able to carry it better.

Yeah.

I have less, you know, random tearfulness episodes, but they still happen.

Sometimes it'll happen when I'm driving or doing dishes for no apparent reason.

Sometimes it'll happen and I'll come home and my house is clean.

There's not four piles of dirt on the couch.

Or, you know, seeing a class of kids that are Woody's age, what he would be now.

Things like that I still get tearful about and it can...

It can still happen, but I'm just better at carrying it, I guess.

Well, Woody was never found, but Jason was found.

And that was actually on Valentine's Day of 2017.

So Jason was cremated.

So for the longest time, I had his ashes in an urn, but I felt like the right thing to do would be to return them to the ocean to be with Woody.