Memorial Mermaids: FWB woman creates art in memory of her husband

Meganne Powell has lived a life full of water.

The Fort Walton Beach resident has always lived near natural water, sometimes gazing at it in awe of its beauty, and other times fully submerged in it while scuba diving.

In the past, many of Powell’s weekends were spent scuba diving with her husband, Stephen Powell, a passionate scuba diver and instructor.

“It’s just another world under there,” Powell said. “You’re some place not everybody gets to go. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful.

“Living away from the water seems like it would be very unusual to me.”

Powell’s life with her husband was “wondrous,” she wrote in his eulogy when he died in February 2016. But the memories of it sometimes escape her — replaced with ones made during Stephen’s five-year battle against ALS, a fatal nervous system disease.

As Powell struggled with the disease and the grief following his death, she channeled the pain into art. It’s no surprise her design of choice is a creature that spends its entire life underwater, a mermaid.

Powell completed a life-size mermaid statue in May and hopes it will become an underwater memorial for those put to rest at sea.

LIVING FOR TODAY

Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone.

Powell’s daughter has a tattoo on her arm with a similar message — one she got even before her father was diagnosed with ALS. Powell feels it sums up the way they approached the disease.

“We cried maybe twice over five years,” Powell said. “We decided we were living with ALS and would face each challenge as it came.”

Stephen first started showing signs of ALS while riding his motorcycle. He started having problems with his foot while shifting on the motorcycle.

“He said it felt like he had socks balled up underneath his toes, even when he was barefoot,” Powell said.

In a quick series of events, Stephen visited a doctor, was sent to a specialist and then sent to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where he was diagnosed with a slow-progressing form of ALS. The ALS prognosis is usually two to five years, and Stephen lived a little more than five years after the diagnosis, Powell said.

“It just slowly crept up his legs, torso, shoulders, then his arms,” Powell said. “He was very lucky. It sounds crazy to say that, but he spoke and could swallow until the end. Some of them can’t.”

The two had three children together. They had to tell the news to their youngest child, Ryan, while he was in high school.

“He was like, ‘So, there’s nothing they can do?’ and I said, ‘No,’” Powell said. “‘Well, Dad’s gonna die.’ I said, ‘We’re all gonna die.’”

The Powell family learned to live for today. Ryan postponed college and other plans after high school to help care for his father.

Stephen told them he couldn’t think about the future or it would put him in a bad mental place.

“He could only function with today, so I had to deal with tomorrow and be ready,” Powell said. “It was a balancing act.”

People would approach Stephen and say he looked great.

“He’d say, ‘I look great for someone who’s dying’ and he’d laugh,” Powell said.

Everybody liked Steve, Powell said. He was a perfectionist. He was dependable. He valued safety.

“He woke in the mornings whistling and ready to go,” Powell wrote in his eulogy.

In his final years with ALS, he was “amazing,” she said.

Powell recalls a memory of him scuba diving one night in treacherous weather while a full boat of people waited on him. He surfaced casually with a huge bag of seashells and no remorse.

“He did everything with gusto,” Powell said.

SINKING THE SEVEN

Powell started making mermaids while Stephen was alive.

Quickly after Stephen was diagnosed with ALS, he became a “lab rat” in a medical study at the Mayo Clinic, Powell said. Making mermaids gave her something to do while she was there with him.

“My husband fell in love with every nurse that touched him and said, ‘Oh, you have to make her one,’” Powell said. “By the time we were done, I think there were 18 mermaids left at Jacksonville Mayo Clinic.

“When someone’s sick like that, you kind of learn to live vicariously through each other.”

Powell didn’t start her art venture alone.

Powell began experimenting with art and mermaids with the help of Mercedes Rodgers, a professional artist. Rodgers taught Powell the clay medium.

When Rodgers’ first child, Conrad, died in 2012, she understood art as a tool to process grief. When Stephen died, Rodgers could relate to Powell’s struggle.

“Nobody can say anything to you,” Rodgers said. “Nothing is ever OK really again. I understood that for (Powell).”

The two resurfaced an earlier idea they had to create a “mermaid tea party” underwater, Rodgers said. They decided to make it a memorial for Stephen and Conrad.

“When you lose someone you’re so close to, that’s such a part of who you are — for me, a child and for (Powell) her soulmate — it just changes your whole perspective and ability to process or do anything,” Rodgers said. “To have something that’s whimsical and fun and approachable for other people is nice, because it does continue the conversation.”

With a group of Stephen’s family and friends in the scuba diving community, Powell and Rodgers sank seven mermaids at a dive spot in Destin.

‘MAGIC UNDER THE WATER’

Powell has about 700 pounds of cement living in her driveway — not including the pavement.

Serafina, the life-size mermaid sculpture planted in front of Powell’s house, was made with a variety of materials — cement, rebar, chicken wire, tile, cotton and window screening. The cotton was used to create the wispiness of the hair to make the mermaid look light, as if she were floating upward underwater, Powell said.

Powell began the statue in September 2017 with half of her neighbor’s Halloween skeleton, she said. She started the project upon request from a Destin boat captain who wants to place it at a dive spot.

“Because she was a skeleton for a couple months, I had this macabre-looking figure standing in the driveway because she was all bones,” Powell said. “She was my zombie mermaid.”

Her neighbors have been monitoring Powell’s progress since the beginning.

“The mailman was funny one day, he walked by and said, ‘Is she done yet? I’ve been watching her,’” Powell said. “As she got closer to being finished, people started slowing down to look at her, and people will ask if they can come look at this side of her.”

Powell understands the curiosity. She felt it herself.

“People would say, ‘I can’t wait to see how she looks,’ and I’d think, ‘Neither can I,’” Powell said. “You really don’t know. Things create themselves.”

Powell completed Serafina in May, and the statue has been garnering attention ever since.

That mermaid encompasses many aspects of Powell’s life, Rodgers said.

“If you look at the hair, you can see she’s a hairstylist,” Rodgers said. “You can see the way the hair moves and the fluidity of it. It brings together the memory of Steve. “I don’t know if she would feel this way, but I feel like it’s a little bit of a self-portrait.”

Powell smiles and laughs when she imagines what Stephan would think of the artwork.

“He’d be really impressed with that,” Powell said. “I think he’d be surprised and not surprised.”

Powell isn’t sure when the piece will be sunk at a dive spot. When it does, she hopes it will enchant divers who see it.

“I hope they’d be enthralled with it and surprised with it,” Powell said. “Hopefully, she looks like magic under the water.”