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Creative collaboration involves three generations

Song a 16-year process
Kierra Jones

There’s nothing worse than losing someone you love, according to Helena Kelly. It was the inspiration behind a poem she wrote 16 years ago about the continuity of life after death.

Now, the poem has become a song to breach generations, with Helena’s granddaughter Ildiko Jane Kelly singing, and daughter-in-law Ildiko Kelly playing piano in a recently posted YouTube video.

“It’s not about the perfection of the music, it’s not about the perfection of the voice,” explained Ildiko, “it just gives a powerful message through us.”

The poem was inspired by a man Helena saw daily as she walked past a cemetery on her way home from work. “He was very weary,” Helena explained. “It’s not that he was old, but his spirit was old.”

Every day she saw him, through spring, summer and fall. But then, in winter, he was gone. “One day when he wasn’t there, I decided to walk over and look at the headstone to see who it was,” she said.

The headstone belonged to a woman who had been 36 when she died—about the right age to be the man’s daughter. Across the headstone read the words, “Her Spirit Lives,” which would become the title and refrain of Helena’s poem.

She never met the old gentleman she used to see every day, but the poem she wrote was inspired by his sorrow. It tries to instill a hope that, after their deaths, loved ones will still carry on.

Seven years back, a friend of Helena’s arranged music to go with the poem. But why wait 16 years to have someone perform it as a song? For each of the Kellys, it was a matter of timing.

Ildiko always knew something should be done with the poem, but she wasn’t spurred to action until a good friend died in a car accident this March. The event inspired her to rearrange the piece to suit the voice of her daughter, Ildiko Jane.

“The timing was perfect,” said Helena. “Ildiko was ready to arrange the music, and we were waiting for [Ildiko Jane]’s voice to develop as well.”

“She just saw the future,” Ildiko said, referring to her mother-in-law. “She knew how powerful the words were going to be.” Ildiko Jane, who just turned 15, hadn’t been born yet when Helena first wrote the poem.

After the piece was rearranged, the Kellys recorded it at The Music Room. Tony Papa and some students from Powell River Digital Film School filmed and edited a video to go with the track.

The finished product is a touching arrangement of Ildiko Jane’s resonant voice over footage of Powell River and shots of actors at Cranberry Cemetery. Since it was posted on YouTube, it has had over 1,200 views.

Likes on the video come from around the world, including Japan and Ildiko’s homeland of Hungary. “Everybody I showed it to cried,” explained Ildiko. “It touches everybody in one way or another.”

All deeply spiritual, the Kellys relish the opportunity to share their gifts with the world.

“For people who have lost loved ones in their life, I hope this gives them comfort,” said Helena. “It’s nice to know that when we pass, that’s not the end of everything.”

Making the track and video has also had some unexpected benefits. “After singing my grandma’s beautiful song, I had the inspiration to write my own,” explained Ildiko Jane. The product of a day’s work, the song won Ildiko Jane first place at the recent Sea Fair talent show.

To view “Her Spirit Lives,” interested readers can search for Ildiko Kelly’s account on YouTube.