In the Afterlife

When I took Oscar for his walk this morning, the wind that greeted us wasn’t the wind of seasons changing. No, the wind that blew the orange, red and yellow leaves against the gray sky was the wind of a season changed – Summer’s over. Get ready for snow.

But this wind didn’t trigger my usual happiness for snow. Instead, it reminded me of a stormy October visit to Cape Cod three years ago with my family. When I was a kid, we had some great family vacations there, and that first night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was struck by how much life changed since then. Our time together as a family no longer felt infinite and I found myself trying to estimate just how many actual days I may get to spend with my dad before his luck, or his body, would finally give out from his years of beating back cancer and heart problems. As I drifted off to sleep, I realized that even my best estimates were, sadly, rather low. As it turned out, they were also quite wrong. Just over six months later, congestive heart failure ended my dad’s life. The wind this morning, then, was a melancholy one for me, and Oscar and I walked silently as the leaves blew by.

Later today, at work, my boss sent a few of us a link to an application named Toogle. With Toogle, you’re presented with a text box and a blank page. You can type in any phrase you want, hit enter and Toogle returns an image from Google’s web site that is related to the phrase you entered. As a twist, the image is masked through the text you typed. We were tinkering around with this when my co-worker Joe asked me if I tried my full name yet and then he chuckled.

So, I typed in my name and saw the images* below.

Somehow, my middle aged white dood name was related to a photo of an African American high school girl. With a little bit of clicking and reverse engineering of the URL, I was able to trace the image back to a blog on the Mass Live, a web site focused on Western Massachusetts. That’s where I grew up, but I moved to Maine nine years ago, so I was still a bit puzzled. I researched this a little more and here’s what I found – an article about a talented artist named Katelyne Benjamin who goes to high school in Springfield, Mass.

At first, I didn’t understand why Google connected us. Then I read her resume highlights:

Received the Bill Moreno and Peter Meltzer scholarship for art classes at Indian Orchard Mills; honorable mention in “Journey Too,” the 2008 Young Artist Show at the mills.

My dad finished his last painting three days before he went to the hospital, ten days before he died. It was an abstract painting, heavy on blues and purples, done on a 4 foot square piece of metal. It was hung on a fence outside the Indian Orchard Mills along with similarly sized pieces by other artists at the Mill. It was hard for our family to leave that piece with the Mill, but he loved art, he loved being at the Mill and that’s where it belonged. At the next open house, the artists put together a memorial for my dad. We attended, but didn’t stay long because it was too emotional. Yet, we didn’t empty his studio until well after that was open house was done. We kept some of his supplies, but much of it – paint, clay, kiln, etc. – we gave to the other artists. At some point during this process, word got to my mom that they planned to set-up some sort of memorial scholarship in his name, too, but we never heard much more about that. Until today, that is….

I’m not one to speculate on the afterlife and what may or may not happen with our spirit when our bodies cease to work. But I do believe that what we pass on to others when we live can continue to have energy after we die. Good or bad, our actions ripple through our lives and through those around us. My dad loved art – the creative drive, the expression, the experimentation. Through a combination of a motivated student artist, a strange bit of coincidence and Google’s mysterious algorithmic interpretation of the internet, my dad’s good vibe managed to ripple through to me on a day when I really needed it. It reminded that I shouldn’t remember my dad in the context of a sad night of depressing insomniac math, but rather to see him for what he was: a caring, passionate man who in some small way is still touching lives and helping to inspire people.

Katelyne, if by chance the internet somehow leads you here, I have to confess my first reaction to the painting behind you in your photo, “Hey, she’s good.” My dad would like it, too. Nice work.

*Note: You can try the search directly with this link but the above image will most likely change as Google updates its image results. The images here were cut from the original search.