Just as recently as last week, Berenjian couldn’t catch a moment’s break – not that he was really looking for one. He always has time for others.
Even before he’s had his morning coffee a steady stream of youngsters and their parents are approaching him – from a distance – for photographs as he wanders from Dundarave to Ambleside on a wet December morning.
It’s been a tough year for everyone, to say the least. Local families and shutterbugs are coming up to Berenjian because he’s decided to dress like Father Christmas this month as a way to offer people a moment’s respite, some human connection during a holiday season that has so far this year felt painfully disconnected.
Whether he was inspired to do this because his granddaughter proclaimed one day “Grandpa, you are Santa!” or he was inspired by the colours and garments that called to him around town, or maybe it was something even higher reaching out to him, Berenjian said he just knew it was something he had to do.
“For me, dressing up is not like ‘dressing up,’” he says. “Some people are taking pictures, they enjoy celebrating the season, and I am available for everyone.”
Small World, Big Heart
Whether he’s talking about his love of nature, the meaning of life, harmony and energy, the spirit world or the poetry of Rumi, Berenjian always seems to come back to a consistent message: that of love and connection.
Berenjian, who has lived in West Vancouver for 32 years, didn’t arrive at his passionate ruminations on life and meaning out of nowhere.
Three years ago, tragedy struck when Berenjian’s 18-year-old daughter passed away suddenly. Berenjian was devastated. In the months following his daughter’s passing, he would lumber up and down West Vancouver’s Seawalk, or the beach, in a daze. He’d look out at the ocean and the salty body of water was the only thing that could match the tears streaming down his own face.
“My condition was so bad, very bad,” he reflects.
Then one day, something amazing happened. Berenjian says he was on the beach meditating, still trying to process his grief, when his daughter spoke to him, he was sure of it, and told him to make her a heart, a gesture of love and connection between the two as Berenjian had often drawn little hearts on his daughter’s hand when she was a child.
“I got up and collected the spring flowers, blossoms from the bushes, gardens, and put them together. That was my first heart,” he says.
The practice has continued the last three years and people have taken notice. Berenjian estimates he has now created up to 60 large hearts culled from fallen flower petals and other natural debris around West Vancouver, many of them at the Seawall Garden on the Centennial Seawalk at the foot of 19th Street, and elsewhere.
He only uses things he finds in nature to make his hearts, and never cuts anything down in order build them up.
“This way I’m communicating with my daughter, and she’s answering me,” he says. “It turns out something amazing. These are not cut flowers. I collect those when they’re down. People think they are dead – they are alive. Nothing dies in this universe.”
Love, Connection and Amora
Although Berenjian has been delighting many locals and connecting with his daughter with these hearts for years, his beautiful flower-petal creations took on a special meaning for many this year as public signs of support, generosity and love became commonplace all over the world during the pandemic.
“You really noticed them during this pandemic. They took on a different meaning,” says Ruth Payne, a West Vancouver resident and retired visual arts co-ordinator for the municipality as well as former curator at the Ferry Building Gallery. Payne first became aware of Berenjian’s heart creations two summers ago.
“Everybody’s in some kind of turmoil, upset, loss, confusion – and a heart’s a symbol of love,” she says. “It’s a universal symbol.”
Berenjian was extra busy making his hearts this past summer, and was happy to see his personal project appeal to more and more people. “That’s what it’s all about: a smile on a face in a moment,” he says.
As Berenjian adds Father Christmas to his repertoire this month, he continues to make hearts out of stones that wash ashore in the absence of brighter flora during the winter months, though the meaning is all the same for him. An intensely spiritual but non-religious man, Berenjian says his true faith is love.
And when you appreciate his story, that general statement about love starts to feel a little more precise: his daughter’s name was Amora. In English, that’s “love,” he notes. The reasons behind his amorous, eccentric email signoff – for his heart-shaped project as a whole – are now clear as day.
“Her name was ‘Love,’” he says.
He signs off.
