The Wreck of the ELLA Fitzgerald??

Posted on November 10, 2025 by matt ballou under Life

When I was young – perhaps five years old – I caught on to the notion that you could call in to the radio station and request songs. I enjoyed listening to the oldies stations and wondering what song might come up next. This was in the era of Casey Kasem and the power of the Billboard Top 100, and music was a little more of a communal cultural situation.

In any case, I was a radio person back then and I liked the idea that you could influence what was going to be played. One day at the age of 8 or so I decided that I wanted to call in to request the Gordon Lightfoot song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I got the number. I (kind of) worked out what I was going to say. But when I got on the air to make the request, I made a fundamental mistake.

You have to understand that my father had a large record collection, and I knew about a lot of different music from my older siblings, so I had heard a lot of names. It was an easy mistake for a kid to make, damn it! When the DJ asked me what I wanted to hear, I was a little flustered and blurted out:

“Can you please play The Wreck of the Ella Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot?!”

This faux-pas got quite a laugh, and not only from the DJ, but also from my family. In the aftermath of this flub I can state I have known the difference between the Edmund Fitzgerald and the great singer Ella Fitzgerald since that very day.

In all seriousness, though, given that I was so interested in the song it was only natural that not so many years later I would start reading books and articles about the events surrounding this notorious loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Gordon Lightfoot was one of the first singer-songwriters who captured and fired my imagination. He (among some others) caused me to think about time and experience in a different way; as something within me and happening alongside me, not just random stuff apart from my life. Perhaps it’s a testament to the very idea of songwriting and musicianship as artforms. For me, Lightfoot embodied that troubadour tradition. These artists sing the tales of history, document it in personal ways, and help shape a democratic view of history itself.

Of course, everyone knows most famously Bob Dylan as one of these history-singers. But there were many others. I would include people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Billie Holiday, Utah Phillips, and Natalie Merchant amongst that group. So many… From Woodie Guthrie and Townes Van Zandt to Tracy Chapman and Ani DiFranco and P.J. Harvey. It’s such a rich – and necessary – tradition.

I find it fitting that my interest in the event of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and learning about the history surrounding it – not to mention becoming curious about the whole Great Lakes region – is all connected to the art of singing out moments of collective experience. This, like so many other things, I owe to art and artists. This is the richness of life: Not in things, but in awareness. Not in owning, but in being.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald as seen from the Ambassador Bridge in 1965.
*Detroit Historical Society*

Today is the 50th anniversary of that ship sinking on Lake Superior. There are many interesting articles currently available from the days and weeks leading up to today (including this one from the Smithsonian and this one from Popular Science). So read about the ship. Read about the song, and listen to it (here’s the first version, but I’ve always been partial to the 1988 re-recording Lightfoot made – it’s a tad longer and has a slight mood adjustment that feels symbolic and mystical to me).

Then take at least 29 seconds – one “for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald” – and may those moments of silent remembrance of them cause you to consider what human commerce, ingenuity, and hubris can do in the face of Nature’s power.

Painting Watercolors in 2003 in Evanston, Illinois

Posted on December 11, 2024 by matt ballou under Life

In March 2003 I had been working at Good’s of Evanston for about 18 months. I worked there after earning my undergraduate degree, and at the time was getting ready to get married and head to grad school.

I worked at Good’s with an amazing cast of characters: Ronnie Boykin Junior, David Gracie, Micah Ebbe, Fred Sturkey, and so many others. One of the people there was Jeremiah Ketner, a man who has gone on to a long and fruitful art career. One day I saw Jeremiah’s coffee cup and we mused together about coffee sometimes being a main meal during the work day. I decided to paint a view of his so-called lunch.

*Jeremiah’s Lunch 3/14/2003*. Watercolor and graphite on paper. 5×6 inches on 14×11 sheet. 2003.

As the Shipping and Receiving Manager, I often had some time between shipments to make art in my little office. I loved that space. Did a lot of thinking back there.

A picture of me in my shipping and receiving office at Good’s of Evanston. 2003.

During this time Alison and I lived in a 3rd floor apartment that had this amazing accumulation of paint and interesting architectural details. Of course, anyone who has lived in Chicagoland is familiar with paint slathered over outlet holes, quirky entryways, specific brick hues, and questionable back stairwells. We had arches throughout the apartment, and I found myself ruminating on them between doing more “important” work. I made my whole portfolio to apply to grad school in that apartment. It’s strange to think that these two small watercolors ended up being special to me. I wouldn’t have guessed it at the time.

*Arching Corner.* Watercolor and graphite on paper. 12×11 on 14×11 inch paper. 2003.

Anyway, as we round out another year I find comfort in these small contemplations. Maybe the lesson is that all of my grand attempts to make statements or contribute to important conversations weren’t the best or most effective offering I could make. Maybe it was the fact that I noticed and paid attention to the poetry of spaces, moments, in-between time, and life being lived that really mattered.

RIP Bill Viola

Posted on July 13, 2024 by matt ballou under Art, Life

RIP Bill Viola.

When I was in undergrad at SAIC, my class visited him while he was installing his 25-Year Survey (Oct 14, 1999 – Jan 9, 2000) exhibition. A classmate and I stood for him to help focus projections in one of his pieces while he talked to the class and led us through the various installations. Such a key memory for me, and an important exhibition for me to see as a young artist.

I love that he embraced sensitivity, even sentimentality, in his work. The art world – and the world in general – is so jaded and navel-gazing at their own foolishness that it’s nice to see someone who really thought about the biggest issues of humanity: our shared conditions, our hopes and dreams and fears, and the strangeness of our embodiment.

Above: A still from his Nantes Triptych, 1992.

The Garage Cheese Tale

Posted on December 26, 2023 by matt ballou under Life

As 2023 rolls toward an ending, I want to share with you something I’ve been keeping to myself for a few years now.

Go back to the beginning of the pandemic. Schools closed. Information and misinformation flew back and forth. Of course everything was a political dumpster fire; a pervasive heaviness spread over the land. And don’t even get me started on the ritual of using disinfecting wipes on every square centimeter of grocery item delivered to our front door. Even on nature trails and in wild spaces we were warned to keep spectacular distance from each other.

It was the weirdness of being told we shouldn’t use the nature trails for hiking or triking that caused me to consider using the Hitt Street Garage as a place to get my miles each day. School had closed in March, and after finishing up that semester remotely I began to spend time in the garage. There were no cars there, and often my children got some out-of-doors time in by riding their bikes around the middle levels while I walked (click here to see evidence of one of my first workouts in the garage).

By the time May ended I was going to the garage several times each week. It was then that I took special notice of a denizen of that forsaken building: the cheese. That’s right: a slice of processed cheese product cheekily flung off a take out burger and – somehow – perfectly caught on the concrete wall. It was THE garage cheese.

I had seen it earlier in the year – perhaps the first week of March. I had no solid idea how long it had been there, but it was leathery and tough (yes, I touched it). It might have been there a month or two. It still had the strong, unnatural hue I’d come to expect from cheese like this. At first it was just a funny bit of ephemera living in the garage, much like the plethora of unused .223 bullets, spent CO2 cartridges, or carcasses of baby birds that hadn’t made it through the summer heat. But as I passed the cheese over and over again in my rounds up and down the floors of the parking garage, it began to take on more and more importance.

Crazy, right?

I shared my observation of the cheese only with family and a few close friends; I didn’t want it to be disturbed. Being early in our collective quarantine, I felt sure the cheese would be safe. But I was keenly aware that once things went “back to normal” there would be some frat-bros carousing in the garage. There was no way the cheese could survive the onslaught of undergraduates! I just wanted to see how long it would last, and I didn’t want any human intervention. There was an alchemy taking place between the cheese and the garage, a synergy that must be allowed to continue! I was committed to no engagement other than photographic documentation.

^{The Garage Cheese on September 12, 2020. Ballou.}

I began taking periodic shots of the cheese, with my first one from September 2020. I know I took earlier images, but I didn’t see the cheese as anything more than a humorous curiosity then, and so didn’t save them. It wasn’t until March 2021 that I made the decision to document the state of the cheese monthly, as well as make periodic check-ins every other week or so. I viewed the month of March as the anniversary of the installation of the cheese, and it felt right since that was when Mizzou closed down. In a way, the cheese was a physical artifact of the many ways in which COVID altered our experiences of life.

Over time, the cheese itself began to change. Flexing with the heat and humidity, cracking under the pressures fighting against its preservative-laced body, the cheese maintained its grip on the concrete. Something in the material nature of the porous wall and the glue-like substance of the cheese made their union not only possible, but hearty. By March 2022 the cheese was gnarly and swarthy, hung all over with dust and the debris of generations of spider webs. The darker coloration made me feel more secure that people wouldn’t see it.

This was important, because life was returning to the campus. The garage was being used more and more. By the fall semester, most people felt safe teaching and learning in masks. This was a tense time for me. I began to check on the cheese several times a week, certain that it would be gone one day. I took to obtaining photos of the cheese only when I would not be observed. I didn’t want my attention to a seemingly nondescript section of the garage to draw others near.

^{The Garage Cheese on March 14, 2023. Ballou.}

I got a bit more intentional with the photography in 2023. The shot from March that year is particularly nice. I began to think the cheese really would make it to the four year mark. People encouraged me to post about the cheese, to make an Instagram account for it, even to mark it on maps. But I knew there would be time later to show folks where it had been. I wanted it to make four – maybe even five – years! As Thanksgiving passed, I felt more confident than ever. After the first day of graduate reviews on December 1st, 2023, I made a pass by the cheese for my December check-up. It looked robust, confident. It was ready to press on toward another anniversary upon the wall. So it was that when the second day of grad reviews concluded on December 8th, I took one of my grad students over to see the cheese. I figured I could share the glory with more people. Surely that would be okay.

THE CHEESE WAS GONE.

Astonished, I rushed out to investigate the scene. There, amid a thick mass of trash and various organic detritus, rested the cheese. It was in a gap between the wall and the floor, and it seemed to be intact. No one had abused this artifact; it had let go of the wall on its own. Its time was up. The race was won.

I carefully rescued the cheese. It was rough and hard, as dense as holding a fragment of bone. Yet, like bone, I perceived it would be brittle. Maybe it had been the dusty garage trash that provided a soft enough landing to save the cheese from breaking against the concrete. Whatever the reason, after nearly 45 months on the wall, the garage cheese was now mine!

^{The Garage Cheese, framed in a shadowbox on December 26, 2023. Ballou.}

I quickly collated my photos of the cheese and obtained a simple shadowbox frame for it. Now safely transferred to the wall of my studio, the cheese can exist in perpetuity, assured the status of a protected relic. As part of the process of documenting and celebrating the garage cheese, I have created the GIF below. I did a modicum of image adjustment so that you can get a sense of the changes that happened over the course of the years. Of course, it’s not perfectly color-corrected, nor entirely aligned for precision, but you can definitely get the sense of how the cheese transformed.

While the cheese itself has left the Hitt Street Garage, there is something that remains behind: a kind of oily stain is still quite visible on the wall of the garage. If you look in this wide shot below, you can see it just a bit left of center. Follow the inner vertical line of the leftmost column downward, and you’ll notice the apostrophe-like arcing shape. That’s a ghostly shadow of the cheese, somehow still clinging to that precarious perch.

^{The location of the Garage Cheese, photo taken on December 26, 2023. Ballou.}

Click below to take a look at a curated selection of the cheese. If you’d like to purchase a print of one of these images, send me $20 on Venmo (here), and I’ll mail it out to you. Just be sure to tell me which one you’d like.

The distance between months and years, and all that we did and saw and felt… in one image. Maybe I should do some risograph prints of these, too… On to 2024!

A final thought, as I sit here with family and smile at my cheese…

Here’s hoping your ’24 is joyful, safe, and peaceful. We know it probably won’t be, though. At least not for most of us. So why do I offer the above trifle about faux fromage? Why present some cast off cheese as a visual metaphor or point of access for meaning? Well, I think the greatest part of our human experience is in the realm of attention. I teach my students this, and I try to teach my own children it as well. When we are attentive to the world around us, when we believe in the value of observation and awareness, then we are most able to be both realistic and hopeful. It is willful ignorance or chosen obfuscation that breaks the social contract, that causes us to care less about each other and the world.

We are living in times of serious violence against not only people but against our ability to apprehend true things. We desire to be told what we want to hear, rather than what we ought to hear. We ignore what should be seen straight on, seeking instead things that distract us from beingness. These are our great sins, particularly in America. We have allowed our politicians to be criminals. We enable them and they stroke our egos in return. Our domestic and foreign policies – for all of our posturing to the contrary – are not “pro-life.” We have become the arm of death. We resist over and over the chance to do what is right, because we know that will make us feel a little uncomfortable. Our comfort is our chief aim, and it’s obvious.

In light of all of that, perhaps everyone would do better to pay close attention to their own version of garage cheese. I hope we can get started on putting our collective house back in order in 2024.

Peace.

Come so close that I might see…

Posted on July 12, 2021 by matt ballou under Life

Recently, my friend Aarik (whom I haven’t seen in person in about two years, which is a travesty) made an intriguing post on Twitter. He was musing about the idea of publishing an anthology of reflections regarding an important single line from some song, film, poem, or other source. He suggested calling this journal Hold The Line and I’ve been thinking about the idea every day since I skimmed my eyes over his tweet.

It goes without saying that each one of us could offer many dozens of lines from the treasure trove we carry in our minds. Lord knows I’ve been moved by everything from scriptures to contemporary internet memes. When I glide back over my life, though, it’s clear that some lines are held more closely to my core – to the experiences they influenced – than others.

Lying in bed last night I decided to make an entry in Aarik’s theoretical journal. My Hold The Line for today (for right now, since probably it would be something else in 20 minutes), is from Mazzy Star’s 1993 masterpiece, So Tonight That I Might See.

“Come so close that I might see the crash of light come down on me.”¹

There’s something so powerful in the idea that when we come together we approach transcendence: come so close that I might see. It’s a proposition, a hope. If/Then. If this other entity is close enough to my core, then perhaps I may experience a charged glimpse of something beyond me. Then it would also be within me, a kind of multiplicity that blows out me-ness with all-ness.

Even so, my perspective – my sensate awareness – is also central. This is like Annie Dillard’s “tree with the lights in it”² or Moses’s burning bush; the intimate presence, both terrifying and awesome, brings astonishment. Come so close that I might be more than me. Ego death. Samadhi. A disappearance of masks and pettiness in lieu of some true (if only momentary) unity.

Let there be light – and it crashes.

There is a bit of an out-of-body charge to the order of operations in Hope Sandoval’s mumbled words, in the “gothic hallucination”³ of Roback’s droning guitar tone. From closeness to sight to the mystical crash of light. Closeness catalyzes an outside, transmundane experience. I see the light come down on me in that moment. Sharp, electric, like an accidental brush against a live wire or the vertigo of a hypnic jerk.

I have felt that pulsing disorientation a few times. With Robin, her blond bob, and the small of her back all those years ago. With Miranda, born like a bomb, a modern Minerva bursting fully-formed into new reality. Even last week, suddenly seeing a former student after years and almost bursting into tears over it.

Maybe the crash of light always carries tears along with it.

Cliché, I suppose. But also real experience and astonishment… moments of enlightenment brought on by the presence of another real person.

Album cover for Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See.

1) Mazzy Star. “So Tonight That I Might See.” So Tonight That I Might See, performance by Sandoval, Hope and David Roback, Capitol Records, 1993.

2) Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York, NY: Harper, 1998. Page 35-36.

3) Moreland, Quinn. “Review – Mazzy Star: So Tonight That I Might See.” Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 14 June 2020, pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mazzy-star-so-tonight-that-i-might-see/.

2017 Pride

Posted on January 5, 2018 by matt ballou under Art, Life, news, Writing

I completed a number of projects in 2017 and started a few more. Setting goals and keeping an eye on the prize during the vicissitudes of daily life can be hard, but I’ve gotten better at it over the years (thanks mostly to my loving partner, Alison). I already mentioned stuff about my exercise routine, and posted about my exhibition of recent work (that opens today!).

Back in May I set some goals for the year while at the Wakonse Conference on College Teaching in Michigan. Here are my written goals:

I’m happy to say that I’ve worked to complete most of these items and even those I’ve not yet finished have been pushed forward. I’m glad, given how agitating 2017 was socially and politically, that at least in terms of family and my work I’ve been stable and focused. The results are things of which I am really proud.

Probably highest on my list is the publication of my essay On Scholarship: Empathic Attention, Holy Resistance. It appeared in SEEN Journal and explores the importance of attention in an environment of political vitriol and “fake news.” I hope you’ll pick up a copy and read it – it’s one of the best things I’ve written in years, and it shares space with artists and writers and thinkers I admire. I’m really thankful for the opportunity to have this piece out there.

A shot of the cover of the SEEN Journal and a copy of the first page of my essay. Above is a copy of The New Territory.

I am also super excited to be working on a piece for The New Territory. If you are a Midwesterner, you need to get this publication. I am working on a piece exploring the work of Joey Borovicka and adjacent ideas about interiority, Midwestern space, and solitude. I can’t wait to get it finalized and ready for the editors to sort through. Getting to write about key ideas and the work of others is very important to my identity as an artist and educator. I also just love being involved with publications like The New Territory and SEEN. They are labors of love and works of passion that really do the hard work of shoring up meaning, intellectual effort, and spiritual yearning.

I hope to continue this trend in 2018, as I’ve got the Promotion to finalize!

One Year After

Posted on February 17, 2017 by matt ballou under Life

It has been a year since my heart attack. Since my cardiac arrest. Since the trauma I don’t remember and that my family saw. Since members of my family kept me alive until the EMTs arrived. Since the radical changes of diet and lifestyle. Since the shift in horizon.

Three days before that I lost my big sister; a life of incredible value and service, gone. Two months afterward my estranged step-father died; a life wasted in self-concern and alcohol.

How would people have summed up my life one year later, if it ended that night?

Since I didn’t go, I have to assess it myself. I know my life has been valuable. I know I have taken deep draughts of experience and thought. I have been astonished. I have been disappointed. I have known love and sacrifice. I have seen things that made me cry in sorrow and weep in happiness. I have tried and failed, then barely hoped and succeeded. I have yearned and yearned, in spite of cheesiness or irony. I have worked so hard and received so much through no merit of my own doing. I have believed and doubted. All through I have attempted to be honorable and careful, passionate and present. Sometimes I have succeeded.

I am SIMUL IUSTUS ET PECCATOR.

I am AGATHOKAKOLOGICAL.

I have tried to understand what it all means. I still don’t. But I think I have some sense of how it feels.

It feels a little like these songs (click the titles to listen):

At Last

I can say that I’ve lived here in honor and danger

But I’m just an animal and cannot explain a life

Down this chain of days I wish to stay among my people

Relation now means nothing, having chosen so defined

And if death should smell my breathing

As it pass beneath my window

Let it lead me trembling, trembling

I own every bell that tolls me.

Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Driving home I see those flooded fields

How can people not know what beauty this is?

I’ve taken it for granted my whole life

Since the day I was born.

Clouds hang on these curves like me

And I kneel to the wheel

Of the fox confessor (on splendid heels).

And he shames me from my seat

And on my guilty feet

I follow him in retreat…

What purpose in these deeds?

Oh fox confessor, please,

Who married me to these orphaned blues?

“It’s not for you to know, but for you to weep and wonder

When the death of your civilization precedes you.”

Will I ever see You again?

Will there be no one above me to put my faith in?

I flooded my sleeves as I drove home again.

A Widow’s Toast

Specters move like pilot flames

Their widows toast at St. Angel.

Better times collide with now

The tears are warm, I feel them still.

They’ll heat to vapor and disperse

And cloud our eyes with weary glaze.

You raise your glass and may exclaim,

“I’ll put my hands on the truth, by God!”

But it’s faster, love, than you and me –

Faster than the speed of gravity.

That’s how it catches you from falling

And how it always, always, always slips away.

Specters move like pilot flames

Their widows toast at St. Angel.

Better times collide with now

And better times

Are coming still.

Neko knows what to say.

I find attention, clarity, and rightness in teaching. I find wonderful confusion in my art-making. I find solace and laughter in my wife. I find a strange wine of joy and frustration in my children. I feel both lost and found. I feel both at home (warm, in bed), and far away in the dark (clouds, wind). I’m in orbit around a great truth and yet my tether is strung out miles from safety.

Believe it or not, all of this is so much better than the 3 or 4 years before the heart attack.

I know that some would want me to declare something, some truth, some more faithful words, some thoughts that sound more spiritually centered. I’m sorry.

Today, I want to take the lessons – the cumulative astonishments of being – as they come. I want to have joy and camaraderie in my students. I want to be gentle and full of wonder with my children. I want to continue to cherish my wife. I want to be a better husband, father, son, brother, artist, teacher, mentor, helper, and friend.

No regrets. I have not loved every moment, but I have been given such grace and love. I’m thankful.

The Mind’s I with Anne Harris

Posted on November 5, 2016 by matt ballou under Art, Life

Over the last couple of days I had the great privilege and honor to get to work alongside Anne Harris on an iteration of her ongoing installation project, The Mind’s I (click here for more info). This version of the project took place at the University of Central Missouri. Two colleagues of mine who taught at Mizzou in the past and who earned their MFAs at Indiana University like I did – Melanie Johnson and Chris Lowrance – were involved as well, as were a number of other UCM faculty and students. I brought several of my grads along for one day of the project, then I went back to work again the next day. It was a great experience.

Anne Harris at work on the project on Saturday, November 4, 2016.

Zach Nutt and Nikos Karabetsos at work, November 3, 2016.

I focused on the abstract shaping of my head foreshortened in a mirror. The strange roundness of my neck was compelling; these are some of the first self-reflective observational/figurative works I’ve made since my heart attack in February.

Below: I also incorporated some linocut Cloud of Unknowing prints into a few of my works; I really like how they turned out.

Overall it was that bulbous shape I was interested in, and how the ceiling lights altered and occuluded what I could see of myself in the strange angle of the mirror.

All of my pieces are mixed media on paper, 11×10 inches, November 3 and 4, 2016.

As you can see in the panorama above, the works were arranged in a grid to fill the space, and each one included date and time information. The array of times were an important aspect of the installation, asking viewers to consider the ween and among the works and their makers. The sense of a shared space, with each person’s intentionality bent toward the question of perception and identity, was palpable.

My piece (center) is to the right of an Anna Harris drawing. Two Simon Tatum pieces project from the wall below.

It was particularly cool to see Anne working and arranging the installation of the works. On Friday, I got to spend several hours in conversation with her about tons of topics, from misogyny in art to adoption, from color theory to the goings on at SAIC (Anne teaches there, and I earned by BFA there in 20o1). It was an amazing time. Anne is smart, warm, and inclusive, and gave lots of attention to everyone who wanted to chat with her. It was such a treat to get to hang out with her!

Above are several more works by my students Nikos, Simon, Amy Meyer, and Guigen Zha.

Above: Honorary grad Simon at work. Below: our host, Melanie Johnson working a self portrait.

On Friday evening a group of us went to eat at Brown and Loe, a fantastic restaurant in Kansas City’s River Market area.

Thanks so much to Melanie for inviting me and my students to participate, and to Anne for the great conversation and generosity of spirit she has.

A Eulogy I Never Got To Give

Posted on February 29, 2016 by matt ballou under Life

On February 14, 2016, my sister Denya died at age 47. After my mother’s tearful call, we went into robot mode and made plans to get back to central NY for the funeral. It’s always a trial to get packed, organized in the van, and on the road. It was more trying this time, though, thinking about the reasons for our trip. Part of what I was trying to work out was just what to think about losing Denya.

I was asked to speak a eulogy and I had been thinking about it during the drive – I had a good chunk of it formulated in my mind. So after the calling hours on the 17^th of February, we went back up to our hotel room and I began writing down what I’d say. At least that’s what I have been informed happened, because I had a heart attack in the hotel room fairly soon after arriving there that evening. I forgot much of what happened over the previous few days, with only brief snippets remaining.

Providentially, my wife was right there, as were the many EMTs, nurses, and healthcare professionals who were in our family or friends with my sister. Within minutes I was being worked on and transported to hospital. Though I am nowhere near 100%, every day feels like a bit more has returned.

So now I want to share the eulogy that I never got to give.

Denya was the definition of determination, clarity of vision, and kindness of heart. At 16, seeing that our stepfather was abusive, Denya decided to leave home and make her own way. She stayed with friends. She got herself to school and work. She did not allow this provisional stage to define her; she aimed toward college. She didn’t let herself get tripped up by small thinking. She didn’t fall into a spiral of foolish actions and relationships; she was wise. Continuing to work and support herself, Denya went to nursing school, eventually rising through the EMT ranks and working in the intense world of Emergency Room trauma.

Denya, age 4.

She grew in faith. She grew in family. She had seen her way through difficult situations at home. She worked toward a vision of education and work and made it happen. She found love in the stability and thoughtfulness of a strong, gentle, honorable man – a man who shared her vision for work and family, for faith and clarity of purpose. In marrying Timmy, Denya truly became an iconic example in my life.

Denya and Tim on their wedding day in 1993.

She had already been a great example of hard work and applied education, but now she was living out the sort of teamwork marriage to which I could aspire. Together, Denya and Tim built a home that was hospitable, secure, fun, and a stage for dreams. When I think back on Denya, that’s what I see: faith, family, and fun.

I also see someone who persevered through periods of intense physical and emotional pain – losing Cassandra; struggling with the effects of lupus constantly; and nearly dying when Cassilyn and Elisabeth were young. It was not merely going through these and other things that were important. It’s that she went through them with grace, strength, acceptance, and transformation. These qualities were already in her, and they were focused and made more potent through her experiences.

She – along with Tim – modeled long-suffering of physical pain like no one else I’ve known. She – along with Tim – showed us what good parenting could be: parenting with grace, fun, and high expectations. She – along with Tim – demonstrated gentle guidance, constant availability, and true enjoyment of their girls. She – along with Tim – lived life with joy and thoughtfulness. She – along with Tim – crafted a home life that nurtured not only their own family but also the families that touched theirs.

Denya with her girls.

So while her death is horrible and sad, and we wish we could have had many more years with her, in a very real way – at least to me – her death is not tragic. What I mean here is that nothing was wasted. She had no dead years, no years of lost potential. She redeemed the time. She made the most of what was given to her. There were no excuses in her life, no regrets. She didn’t live in anger or sorrow about what might have been. That is a triumphant life – a life full of meaning. It’s a life we can be thankful to have witnessed and been a part of.

Denya’s death is a huge loss. Yet each of us has been allowed to bear witness to her example, to her grace, and to her laughter in some way. Seeing her working at the Super Duper. Seeing her pursue her nursing education and succeed at it. Seeing her Camaro with the airbrushed roses on the sides. Hearing her infectious laugh. Watching her play the Red Queen in a high school production of Alice in Wonderland. Maybe you’re even one of the lucky ones who experienced her jumping out of the twilight shouting “I’M DA BREATHER!!!” at you, scaring you half to death.

An airbrushed rose from the side of Denya’s Camaro.

I will miss you, Denya. I’ll miss your love and faith. I’ll miss your sense of humor and your grace. But I know that these things clearly live on in those who knew you, loved you, and built lives with you. We are so thankful to have had you with us for this time, and we know that you carry on.

A recent note from Denya.

Dying and Living

Posted on February 21, 2016 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching, Uncategorized

blood vessels within my heart — A visual inside my heart during a catheter procedure.

I am still in a danger zone, but resting with friends and family today, especially my Alison.

Alison, my constant companion, reading to me.

Hospitals are certainly not perfect, but I would have died without one and without the actions of my wife and my cousin Mechell who acted so swiftly. So many important moments we never remember – but others do, because they acted when we could not. Our lives are not our own only.

We live on to love and make art and ask great questions, even if only for a short time – and even the longest life is a mere half-half-breath of the universe. We perceive our realities through such feeble – yet remarkably robust – senses. That contradiction is what makes us know and dream of God, or find great joy in Keats, or learn to (start to) understand Nabokov, or sing in protest with Miss Nina Simone.

Living on means recognizing the value in every human life. It means rejecting the thinking that sees that sentiment as merely sentiment and not a life value. Living on means understanding privilege and working against it when it creates enclaves of inequality. Living on means looking for of gains for everyone – from the streets of Cidade de Deus to the house next door. And if you don’t believe that, maybe you’ve not lived and lived close enough to death.

*Untitled Work* in progress, oil on panel, 24×24 inches.

Living on means paying attention. My students at all levels learn that my classes are about awareness and attention, far more than they are about specific skills.

Many thanks in these hours close to death goes to my wife, Alison, my cousins Chris and Sarah and Mechell, and my Aunt Beth, Aunt Cathy, Aunt Sue and Uncle Roger (who helped coordinate things and met Alison at the Hospital).

Of course, my Mom and Pastor Dan have been there nonstop taking care of my three rambunctious kiddos. Couldn’t recuperate without that vital help.

Also, the example of Jake and Ali Gonzalez of how to live honorably in proximity to death. And the dedication and passion of Deborah Huelsbergen, who has taught me to love me students more than grades or curricula.

There are so many more I could shout out to, like my brothers Daniel (and fiancée Sharon!) and David (that’s his knitting above) and my sisters Stacey and Denya… Denya knew how to live and love close to death most of her life. And when death took her last Sunday, it could not take the values she gave to her daughters, to me, or to my kids.

We live close to death. Do we believe it? Do we seek to redeem the time? Let’s make the most of it.

PS: it also helps to keep Mr C nearby with random hamburgers….

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