“Carl and Susan Chase, pillars of local arts, die by choice” reads the headline in the Weekly Packet, our local newspaper. Carl and Susan were part of my of my life. Not a big part. But a part. And now—too late—a larger part. Because I don’t want to let them go.
One of Susan’s sculptures stands in the garden behind our house. It’s called “The three sisters:” three abstract standing female figures in green and earthy colors textured with the rockweed she’d impressed in their bodies before they’d hardened, painted with dyes she’d invented, placed where she’s installed them, looking toward at the Salt Pond.
“A gathering will be held at the Susan Chase Sculpture Garden, at 150 Red Trail in Brooksville.” the article concluded. Bobbi and I decided to go. We didn’t know if it was a public park or an area of the Chase’s property or someone else’s. When we got to Brooksville, we saw a sign telling us to park and take a bus. “Not much room for cars up there,” someone told us.
We got on the bus and, after a while, headed up into the woods first on a narrow paved road and then an even narrower dirt road. We’ve been here before,” I said to Bobbi, and memories began to return. We’d met Susan at her studio. After arriving at the gathering, I walked through Susan’s studio—looking at pieces that she’d recently completed—and I remembered more.
The Leighton Gallery in Blue Hill had a sculpture garden in the back and featured a lot of her work, including the “The three sisters,” which I loved. I’d stop by and look from time to time—perhaps over the course of a year or two or three. This was somewhere around 2002 or 2004.
Some memories are faded, and some are clear. I might have toyed with buying the piece—that memory is faded. Its price was $3,500—that one’s clear. Bobbi and I were still struggling to fund our retirement, and we’d never paid more than a few hundred dollars for a piece of art. So $3,500 was not a price I was prepared to pay.
And then, one year, her sculpture was gone. And as soon as it was gone, I knew how much I wanted it.
In retrospect, it seems I should have found her through the gallery—but I didn’t. Maybe I asked them and they couldn’t or wouldn’t help. Perhaps I didn’t want to pay a middleman. Whatever happened, I remember looking on the internet to see if I could find Susan. No luck.
Doing a date-range search, today, I find nothing about Susan until this article in the Brooksville Breeze in 2014. It wasn’t that my Google-fu was insufficient in 2005. She was not on the web for years.
So I gave up. Until Alyssa and Kon got married.
Flash! In the Pans was our town’s steel band. By the time we’d arrived in Blue Hill, Flash! was a feature of summer life with street dances on Mondays in the Blue Hill Town Park, the Bucks Harbor Store, and other places on the peninsula.
Kon and Alyssa wanted the smaller steel band, the Atlantic Clarion, to play at the reception. I might have connected with Carl at one of the Street dances—memory fails. But I do remember looking in the phone book to find his phone number seeing the listing: “Carl and Susan Chase.” Could it be the same Susan Chase?
It was.
We talked on the phone and later drove up to her studio. The sculpture that I’d seen at the Leighton had been sold, but Susan had photographs of it and she was willing to do another. We discussed options. She gave me a price, and I readily agreed.
The “sisters” were finished, and Susan installed them in time for the wedding.
I saw Susan and Carl at a Flash! street dance at the town park last summer, the first time I’d been to one in a while. I’d taken a picture of one of the sisters a few weeks before and showed it to Susan and thanked her again for her work.
And now they’re gone.
“We have had full and happy lives, blessed with extraordinary good luck,” the couple wrote in a letter to the community found after their deaths. “It is unreasonable at our age to assume it will continue that way, and we want to leave while things are still good, before our luck runs out, not after!”
I wish they’d stretched their luck a bit more.
What saddened me—and still does—is the end of the article:
They widen their gaze toward the end of the letter, stating they “have no desire to be a further witness” as “decency and rule of law are disappearing daily right before our eyes….Things are sure to get uglier and more violent as ‘survival of the fittest’ becomes the rule.”
Reading it, I burst into tears. They—like so many other people— had been convinced that these are true statements—or approximately correct.
I look at it differently.Our lives are miraculous. It took literally billions of years to create each of us.There are bad things happening, but we have seen far worse. A bad future is possible, but by no means inevitable. We have the right to end our lives when we choose, but I don’t believe our lives are our own.
None of us lives in isolation. Our lives are hopelessly and beautifully entangled with the lives of others. My connection to Carl and Susan is a scant one, but I am still saddened to the point of tears by their decision.
None of us lives in isolation. Our lives are hopelessly and beautifully entangled with the lives of others. My connection to Carl and Susan is a scant one, but I am still saddened to the point of tears by their decision.
In “Person of Interest,” one of the characters says: “Everyone dies alone. But if you mean something to someone—if you help someone, or love someone, if even a single person remembers you—then maybe you never really die at all.”
I think they’ve got it wrong. I think it’s true that if you mean something to someone, then something of you lives on.
But no one dies alone.
“Carl and Susan Chase, pillars of local arts, die by choice” reads the headline in the Weekly Packet, our local newspaper. Carl and Susan were part of my of my life. Not a big part. But a part. And now—too late—a larger part. Because I don’t want to let them go.
One of Susan’s sculptures stands in the garden behind our house. It’s called “The three sisters:” three abstract standing female figures in green and earthy colors textured with the rockweed she’d impressed in their bodies before they’d hardened, painted with dyes she’d invented, placed where she’s installed them, looking toward at the Salt Pond.
“A gathering will be held at the Susan Chase Sculpture Garden, at 150 Red Trail in Brooksville.” the article concluded. Bobbi and I decided to go. We didn’t know if it was a public park or an area of the Chase’s property or someone else’s. When we got to Brooksville, we saw a sign telling us to park and take a bus. “Not much room for cars up there,” someone told us.
We got on the bus and, after a while, headed up into the woods first on a narrow paved road and then an even narrower dirt road. We’ve been here before,” I said to Bobbi, and memories began to return. We’d met Susan at her studio. After arriving at the gathering, I walked through Susan’s studio—looking at pieces that she’d recently completed—and I remembered more.
The Leighton Gallery in Blue Hill had a sculpture garden in the back and featured a lot of her work, including the “The three sisters,” which I loved. I’d stop by and look from time to time—perhaps over the course of a year or two or three. This was somewhere around 2002 or 2004.
Some memories are faded, and some are clear. I might have toyed with buying the piece—that memory is faded. Its price was $3,500—that one’s clear. Bobbi and I were still struggling to fund our retirement, and we’d never paid more than a few hundred dollars for a piece of art. So $3,500 was not a price I was prepared to pay.
And then, one year, her sculpture was gone. And as soon as it was gone, I knew how much I wanted it.
In retrospect, it seems I should have found her through the gallery—but I didn’t. Maybe I asked them and they couldn’t or wouldn’t help. Perhaps I didn’t want to pay a middleman. Whatever happened, I remember looking on the internet to see if I could find Susan. No luck.
Doing a date-range search, today, I find nothing about Susan until this article in the Brooksville Breeze in 2014. It wasn’t that my Google-fu was insufficient in 2005. She was not on the web for years.
So I gave up. Until Alyssa and Kon got married.
Flash! In the Pans was our town’s steel band. By the time we’d arrived in Blue Hill, Flash! was a feature of summer life with street dances on Mondays in the Blue Hill Town Park, the Bucks Harbor Store, and other places on the peninsula.
Kon and Alyssa wanted the smaller steel band, the Atlantic Clarion, to play at the reception. I might have connected with Carl at one of the Street dances—memory fails. But I do remember looking in the phone book to find his phone number seeing the listing: “Carl and Susan Chase.” Could it be the same Susan Chase?
It was.
We talked on the phone and later drove up to her studio. The sculpture that I’d seen at the Leighton had been sold, but Susan had photographs of it and she was willing to do another. We discussed options. She gave me a price, and I readily agreed.
The “sisters” were finished, and Susan installed them in time for the wedding.
I saw Susan and Carl at a Flash! street dance at the town park last summer, the first time I’d been to one in a while. I’d taken a picture of one of the sisters a few weeks before and showed it to Susan and thanked her again for her work.
And now they’re gone.
“We have had full and happy lives, blessed with extraordinary good luck,” the couple wrote in a letter to the community found after their deaths. “It is unreasonable at our age to assume it will continue that way, and we want to leave while things are still good, before our luck runs out, not after!”
I wish they’d stretched their luck a bit more.
What saddened me—and still does—is the end of the article:
They widen their gaze toward the end of the letter, stating they “have no desire to be a further witness” as “decency and rule of law are disappearing daily right before our eyes….Things are sure to get uglier and more violent as ‘survival of the fittest’ becomes the rule.”
Reading it, I burst into tears. They—like so many other people— had been convinced that these are true statements—or approximately correct.
They are not. Widen your gaze further and you’ll see that across the globe decency and rule of law have been increasing, not decreasing. Yes, there are horrible things happening that affect enormous numbers of people. But more people are thriving and living in regimes with decent laws than ever.
It’s not wrong to be concerned. There’s no certainty that things will get better. But there’s no need for despair either.
Widen your gaze even further and you see that life is nearly miraculous and each of our individual lives is a minor miracle. (I am being metaphorical, of course, both life and our individual lives are natural phenomena, but so as unlikely as to qualify—without close examination—as miracles.
The fact is that it took literally billions of years for life to arise and billions more to create each of us.
There are bad things happening, but we have seen far worse. A bad future is possible, but by no means inevitable. We have the right to end our lives when we choose, but I don’t believe our lives are our own.
None of us lives in isolation. Our lives are hopelessly and beautifully entangled with the lives of others. My connection to Carl and Susan is a scant one, but I am still saddened to the point of tears by their decision.
In “Person of Interest,” one of the characters says: “Everyone dies alone. But if you mean something to someone—if you help someone, or love someone, if even a single person remembers you—then maybe you never really die at all.”
I think they’ve got it wrong. I think it’s true that if you mean something to someone, then something of you lives on.
But no one dies alone.
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