Over the past few weeks there has been a series of people famous for a variety of things in various genres and spheres of influence who have passed away. I wonder what happens to all that genius? Does it just dissipate off into the ether? Personally I think this brilliance is always with us and always has been. When the special and beloved pass on I believe their skills and imaginations are opened up to the world for others, perhaps younger and developing, or older and reaching an epiphany, to find and welcome into their consciousness. Consciousness does not die. It has been around since the beginning. If in the beginning was the word there had to be a consciousness that either uttered the word or heard it.
This concept now leads some quantum physicists to postulate that there was consciousness before matter. Frankly it makes sense to me that there must have been some entity that imagined the big bang, and also witnessed it, in order to verify its reality. If there is conservation of mass and energy then it follows that there is conservation of consciousness as well. Enough of my metaphysical pondering.
Already in 2014 we have lost Pete Seeger, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ralph Waite, Sid Caesar, Shirley Temple, Ralph Kiner, Joan Mondale, Maximillian Schell, Ariel Sharon, Phil Everly, and just yesterday Aveda founder Horst Rechelbacher.
Horst has always held a place inside me. In the mid 70’s I received and modeled hair styles for men in his salon in Deephaven MN and occasionally played music there for the clients. It was a win win, as the well to do women would bring their husbands in and I would make a few bucks. For some reason he liked me and wanted to help my career. Horst was like that, helping people for no reason other than he felt something. He was always thinking of new ways to bring more real beauty into the business of beauty. His own epiphany in the mid seventies brought us an appreciation for ayurvedic methods of imbuing the body with scents and products from the earth. Suddenly he saw a clearer picture of the nature of beauty, and he did something about it.
All of these notable individuals did remarkable things, in so many different areas and in so many different ways. What a concentration of powerful life force these paragons have left us. I feel certain there are some special people out there right now who have been the beneficiaries of a gift of creative energy, which they can now use to push the world forward again, in a never ending cycle of love manifesting itself as vision and invention. Life is miraculous isn’t it
But Then Again, I Could be Right. 
You can add our son, Jake to that illustrious list. Although only 24 when he died, he contributed so much to his sphere of friends and families. That influence radiates throughout the world to this day. The friends whom he influenced to take a risk, to excel, people he nudged in a new direction who are still travelling today. We can’t measure that type of influence. It is magnified as time goes on. The girl with whom he did a project on stem cells in his high school biology class is now pursuing a career in public health. How many lives will she save because Jake turned her on to science? You won’t read about him on Huffington Post, or in Time or Newsweek. There will be no editorials by famous persons about the tragedy of his passing, the extinguishing of a light that should have shone on for years. But his consciousness has no less to offer the universe than any of the people you listed above. And, I console myself with the thought that it persists, somehow, somewhere, and may yet manifest itself in some way unlooked for or unexpected.
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