What is the matter?

What is the matter? The matter? The nature of matter?

The other day my 87-year-old father-in-law, Bill, told me his query.

He wants to find out what’s at the end of the universe. He wants me to help him find out. He’s been asking this question of everyone he knows; everyone who will listen.

Bill’s wife, my late-mother-in-law, died a few months ago. They had been married for more than 65 years. After her death, he spoke only of her. Now he speaks of her in relation to the universe.

Bill wants the definitive answer to this question. He wants this answer to come from science. He said scientists have told him that the universe folds in on itself – and he shook his head, as if this is not the answer he seeks.

Bill has always been a scientist. Educated at MIT and Tufts, with advanced degrees from both places, Bill has never doubted the scientific theory.

My husband tells me that Bill always used to avoid eye contact, believing that making eye contact can be misinterpreted as an aggressive act. But when we spoke the other day, I leaned forward and stared into his liquid, oceanic eyes, both of us searching together for the answer to the question of matter.

At first I told him that the answer is love and kindness – and we each must find this answer in our heart – and caring for one another is all that really matters. He nodded, agreeing, but also insisting that there is a scientific explanation – some answer we can seemingly ascertain if only we can think it through.

Then I reminded him that all things and concepts are associated with symbols – and perhaps in seeking his answer, he could meditate on the connection of each thing to another, and perhaps that could help him arrive at the answer. He considered this explanation.

Finally I asked him what would happen if he found the answer. “If you could find the answer, if you actually knew, maybe you would be sad, because then there would be no more questions, and wouldn’t that be sad, not to have any more questions?” He smiled, then laughed, then said, “You have me.”

It is part of the puzzle, isn’t it? To seek – an answer or an object – even if we cannot understand it or possess it – and yet – there is such sadness when the seeking has ended.

When I try to define the universe, I meditate on the symbology behind the etymology of the word matter: mother – mother of creation, mother of what is holy, giving birth to all that is material, to all that we know of, to all that we know we are, all heart and spirit and soul; all that matters.