OP-ED: The Opportunity Rover is Dead and I Will Never Love Again

A Farewell to My love—

Woe is me. 

My heart is filled with pain. My eyes are strained with the stress of tears yet unshed. 

Oppy has died, and I will never love again. 

My beautiful, tragic love – the Opportunity Rover, has passed away, after fourteen lovely years in a land far, far away from me. The sifting scarlet sands have covered his solar panels and taken him away from me. 

We weren’t supposed to last for as long as we did. It was only supposed to be a quick summer romance – three months at the most. But then you reached out, and we kept our love burning. 

You found water in the desert of my love, and proved for others, that life can grow in a barren place. 

You got stuck in a dune back in ’05, and I thought it was over. Surely, we cannot survive this. 

But we did. 

We lived, and we loved, and we overcame. Even through consistent health issues – a broken arm here, a faulty sensor there. But we lasted, far longer than we were supposed to. 

When the end came, I got my friends to help. We sent commands. We beamed you music: David Bowie's "Life on Mars?," Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," and "Here Comes the Sun.”

Your last words, interpreted by Jacob Margolis, echo what my aching soul feels right now. 

“My battery is low and it's getting dark."

I will live now with the knowledge that I will never be able to love as deeply, as fully, or as beautifully as I did before. I will look at my locket, which has our last portrait together, and think of what could have been. 

I will think about the memories shared – me, loving him from afar, the struggles of a long-distance relationship, the joys of seeing our relationship blossom and grow over a fourteen-year period. 

And in closing, I will say the song we sung for you, as the sun drifted away, and you grew cold. 

“I’ll find you in the morning sun

And when the night is new

I’ll be looking at the moon

But I’ll be seeing you.”

Your Truest Love for Always, 

Kelly