For this character collaboration post, I chose to make a picture that contained not only the words from a poem, but the visual created by those words. The poem “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” is one I have read and seen at different times of my life and I wanted to make something dedicated to this poem. This visual shows how the death of Sebastian Crane greatly affected Lawrence Spitler.
Initially, I wanted a post where both characters were the same age, but I was so interested in Tiffany’s present-day character that I decided to come up with a story for how they know one another. By 2015, Sebastian would be 90 years old and Lawrence is in his 30s, so I had them be neighbors. When they first encountered each other, Lawrence thought Sebastian was just a senile old man, yet Sebastian saw himself in him and wanted to know more about him. So to initiate the conversations, Sebastian once put a letter from his mailbox into Lawrence’s (Sebastian still played his tricks, but these were not malicious) so that he would come to deliver it and he could try to talk to him more. Lawrence was still closed off, yet one night a man tried to break into Sebastian’s car and Lawrence scared him off. To thank Lawrence, Sebastian invited him over for a beer. Soon enough, Lawrence began visiting Sebastian’s house a several days a week and Sebastian brought out the best in Lawrence, as he was the most honest about his feelings when he was with Sebastian. Although they did have arguments about Lawrence’s lifestyle, Lawrence loved Sebastian like his own father and Sebastian like another son. They grow close to one another to a point where Lawrence sees him as the father figure he never really had after his own father passed when he was so young. Sebastian would tell Lawrence all about his life, from how he once was cold, but because of his loving wife Sasha and his brother Donovan, he was able to show his golden heart to all those he met. He once told Lawrence that “You cannot see light without walking through a field shadows. The light, the good, is waiting to be seized by you. Because every good and bad thing happens for a reason. We need the bad to know what good really is; to know what what is worth fighting for and what things can be left behind.” Sebastian saw himself in Lawrence from the moment they met and that was why he wanted the best for Lawrence and encouraged him to make better decisions or have more of an open heart. Lawrence drove Sebastian to the hospital when he had a severe stroke and stayed with him until the end. Before he passed on, he told Lawrence that he made the last years of his life better and that Lawrence would never be alone. At Sebastian’s funeral, Lawrence spoke of the man who showed him towards a new light and soon, he was the only one standing in front of his grave. He remembered Sebastian reciting the poem “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” once when they were on his porch as he told Lawrence that the poem helped him cope with the losses of his father, Donovan, and Sasha. He told Lawrence that he believed the spirit does not stay at the grave, rather they stay beside those they love, like a guardian angel. Since then, Lawrence had a change of heart because of Sebastian and he sought to do better for himself and others.
To make this photo, I combined a picture of an angel statue and one of two men walking beside one another on Pixlr and used Powerpoint to add the text (which took a very long time figuring out how to do because of the color of the text). After, I adjusted the color of the final photo to make the poem stand out more.
I chose the angel statue because it represented the idea of a grave and in this particular post, Sebastian passes away and serves to be Lawrence’s guardian angel. For the picture of the two men walking together, I wanted this to be a picture of Sebastian and Lawrence going for a walk, showing their closeness to one another.
