The first time I spoke to Erin was at a dance in middle school. She was so popular that everyone wanted to dance with her. I was wondering when I could jump in line. You have to know what I was like at that time: very shy, always worried that I would appear too timid. After hesitating like this for a long time, I finally got what I wanted, but we only danced for a few minutes, and soon someone else jumped in.

One time, Erin invited me to her home. When I arrived at her house, Erin was worrying about her philosophy homework. “Our teachers always remind us that everything is like paper, with two sides,” she said.

"Your teacher's words also have two sides." I said.

"What's the meaning?"

I read about the "Moebius strip" in an encyclopedia. At that time, the Möbius strip was not well known to everyone, but it was well understood. I took out a piece of paper, twisted it half a turn and connected the two ends to make a ring. Erin was excited when she saw it.

In class the next day, Erin waited for the teacher to say that. Sure enough, the teacher picked up a piece of paper and said: "Any question is like paper, with pros and cons." At this time, Irene took out the Möbius strip twisted into a piece of paper in her hand and said, "Teacher, your question A sentence also has two sides - I have a piece of paper with only one side here!" The teacher and the whole class were surprised, and Eileen showed the Möbius strip with a sense of accomplishment. I think she started to look at me differently after that. Soon, we established a romantic relationship.

After high school, I went to MIT and then Princeton, and I came home to see Erin every vacation. One time, I went to see her and there was a lump in her neck. The lump kept getting bigger and smaller. The doctor said that the problem seemed to be in the lymphatic system. After repeated discussions, a doctor at the hospital finally told us that Eileen was most likely suffering from Hodgkin's disease. He said: "The condition may relapse and gradually get worse. There is currently no cure, and Irene can probably live for another two or three years."

Faced with such a huge ordeal, Eileen behaved very calmly and quickly considered the next question. "Okay," she said, "I have Hodgkin's disease, so what do we do next?" I thought, even though I didn't have a PhD yet, I already had a research job at Bell Labs. We were able to rent a small apartment in Queens, New York, not far from the hospital and Bell Labs. We can get married in New York. We had everything planned out that afternoon.

With her new plan in mind, Erin went to the hospital to have a biopsy performed on the lump in her neck to fully confirm the condition. A few days later, Irene called: "The test report is out. The diagnosis is lymph node tuberculosis." Irene also said: "In this way, I may live for 7 years, and I may get better." Since then, we know that, We can face anything together. After experiencing this incident, no problem can trouble us.

After World War II broke out, I was hired to join the Manhattan Project while continuing to study for a Ph.D. A few months later, as soon as I got my degree, I announced to my family that I was going to get married.

We found a charity hospital at Fort Dix, just outside Princeton, where Irene could be treated while I was at Princeton.

We decided to get married on the way to the hospital. I borrowed a car, folded down the back seat, added a mattress, and transformed it into an ambulance, so Erin could lie down for a while when she got tired. I drove to Erin's house to pick up my bride. After waving goodbye to Erin’s family, we set off. We traveled through Queens and Brooklyn, took the ferry to Staten Island—our romantic cruise—and registered our marriage at City Hall.

From that point on, I would leave Princeton every weekend to see Irene.

Once I received a package, which contained a box of pencils - there was a line of small gold letters on the dark green pen barrel, which read: "Dear Richard, I love you! Little fool." It was from Irene. (I call her "little fool"). It's sweet, and I love her very much, but pencils tend to get thrown around: for example, after discussing a law or problem with Professor Wegener, I'm likely to leave my pencil on his desk. If so, those words make people feel so embarrassed.

We weren't rich then, so I didn't want to waste those pencils. I found a razor blade from the bathroom and scraped off the writing on the pencil before using it.

The next morning, I received a letter that began: "Why do you have to scratch off the writing on the pencil?" and then: "I love you, don't you feel proud?" It continued: "You Why do you care what other people think?" So what else could I do? I had to use the printed pencil directly.

Soon I was transferred to Los Alamos. Robert Oppenheimer, the general director of the project, arranged for Eileen to find the nearest hospital there. I went to see her every weekend during my break. I often hear from Erin during the workday. Some letters would be shaped like a Scrabble puzzle, cut up, put into bags and mailed. When I received it, it was accompanied by a note from the officer who checked it, which probably read: "Please tell your wife that we don't have time to play guessing games."

Although Eileen is in a small room, her heart is in the whole world. I was happy that Erin was enjoying it, and there was nothing I could do about it.

As time passed and Eileen's health worsened, her father came from his hometown to visit her. One day he called me in Los Alamos and said, "You'd better come here right now."

By the time I saw Eileen, she was very weak and her consciousness was somewhat blurred. She didn't seem to know where she was. She stared straight ahead most of the time, occasionally looking to the side, and had difficulty breathing.

I went for a walk and was surprised at how calm I still felt, which was not what I imagined I would be feeling at the end of the day. Maybe I'm kidding myself. I felt down but not particularly sad, maybe because we knew long ago that this day would come.

This is hard to explain. If Martians (assuming that they will not die naturally unless there is an accident) come to the earth and see such special creatures as human beings - death will inevitably come after living for seventy or eighty years - the Martians will definitely feel that they know that life is short. Living under such circumstances is a terrible psychological burden. Yes, we humans know how to deal with this problem: we laugh, we play, we live.

For Erin and I, the only difference from other people is that they have 50 years and we only have 5 years. This is just a difference in quantity, but the psychological burden they face is the same. Unless we think "those with 50 years are happier", then there is indeed a difference. But that idea is too strange. Why make yourself more miserable by complaining about "Why am I so unlucky?" If you understand reality and accept it from the bottom of your heart, you will never have any of the above complaints. No one knows what will happen, what you experience is just an accident in life. What a wonderful time I had with Erin.

I went back to her room. I kept imagining the physiological changes that were taking place: the lungs couldn't bring enough oxygen into the blood, the brain became confused due to lack of oxygen, and the heart became weak due to lack of oxygen, which made breathing more difficult. I'd always suspected there would be a moment of total collapse - a sudden shutdown of all the organs. But the moment never came, she just became more and more delirious, and her breathing became weaker and weaker, until there was no breath at all.

The nurse on duty came in, confirmed that Erin was dead, and then went out. I sat quietly for a moment, then walked up to her and kissed her one last time.

I'm surprised her hair still smells the same. Of course, if you think about it, your hair's smell shouldn't change. But this touched me a lot at the time, because I felt that a huge change had just happened, but it seemed like nothing had happened.

During that time, I must have taken some kind of psychological intervention on myself, because I didn’t shed a single tear. It wasn’t until about a month later that I passed by a store window in Oak Ridge and saw a beautiful dress and thought, Erin would love it, and burst into tears.