Day 12

This has been an emotional 12 days for me and the four other members in this household.  Seeing individuals honoring Matthew each in their own creative way, along with groups of students and whole teams---we are amazed and beyond appreciative by the outpouring of love and support for Matthew and for us.

When we started Matthew’s One Last Goal on July 2nd, 2019, as much as Matthew loved flowers (which he absolutely did—every year Mrs. Henry helped him plant an arrangement in a container so he could enter them as a 4-H exhibit in the Erie County Fair), we knew that he would have thought that too many flowers at his funeral in his memory would be a waste.

We considered having Matt’s friends and loved ones remember him though a donation to one of the four schools which gave him so much—Eden, Nichols, Middlebury, and UB.  I remember being awake for much of the night of July 1st, 2019,  and I just started writing.  Somehow Matthew speaks to me through both his previous writing which I have found in his personal belongings, along with my writing attempts as I struggle to put down words.  He was 100 times the writer I will ever be, yet I am able to hear him when I write.  And that night, it dawned on me that he worked so hard to get his message of mental wellness heard, but he felt no one was listening to him. That’s when I realized that to truly honor him, we needed to do more than beautiful flowers or much needed scholarships to the schools which he loved.

With the help of Mary Bradach, from the  Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, and my loving, very knowledgeable and experienced sister Nancy and nephew Alex, along with my children and some extended family members, Matthew Benedict’s One Last Goal was formed.  At that point we figured that the “flower money” donated in Matthew’s memory would be managed and invested through the CFGB, which would make it everlasting, and then every year we could give a small amount of money in Matthew’s memory to an organization that was working on the mental health crisis.

Little did we know that some of Matthew’s friends would step up to help us.  Before we knew it, our little One Last Goal fund grew from “flower money” to continued support from so many, which helped us almost immediately make an impact on the young people in our communities.

Some of the projects we are currently working on or are trying to secure include: Project Connect, Ross Szabo “Behind the Mask” virtual webinars (in partnership with the Maria Love Fund),  Ross Szabo’s visit to Buffalo on October 4th, 2021, “H3H to Campus”, a college scholarship for a student, and a college summer internship for a student.

This is all very new to us.  The boards Bill and I previously served on consisted of a cooperative pre-school board, pta, church, hockey, and homeowner’s association--we never really made the leap to larger community-wide boards or foundations.  As we continue to muddle along trying to figure out what this foundation and what our “board” really mean, we have added some young people who have volunteered countless hours in helping us.  They are intelligent, passionate, driven, and care deeply for Matt. They have their own extremely busy lives, but each one of them has spent an inordinate amount of their time making a commitment to help us and honor Matt.

Our original team members include Joe Avino, Annesha Bhattacharya, and Dave Elkhatib.  We are so happy to say that Charlie Stein, Jake Zimmer, and Trotter Oberrender have agreed to join all of us in this quest to establish and support efforts that help communities understand the importance of mental health,  help students and athletes who struggle with their mental health, raise awareness about brain damage, and aid in the enormous challenge of suicide prevention.

As this challenge comes to a close for us, I am deeply humbled by the amount of participation.  It gives me energy to continue to fight this battle in Matthew’s name.

I think it’s important to understand the real work starts now.  It’s the choices we make to help ourselves and help others who may be working hard on their mental wellness or who may be struggling with a particular aspect of mental health. It’s the work needed in the understanding of concussions and sub-concussive hits and how extremely debilitating they can be.  It’s the listening to others, patience with others, reaching out to others, unconditionally loving others that can make all the difference in someone else’s life.  Sometimes it just takes one kind word or gesture to make a difference in someone else’s life.

Instead of avoiding this topic or being ashamed of our feelings and struggles, we need to understand that we are not alone in this battle, and we should never, ever, give up.

It was a challenge. Yet, I was never scared of a challenge.”      -Matthew Benedict

My physical challenge: Walking back and forth from our pond to our house—12 times. It was more taxing than it sounds.

My donation: I donated to the Buffalo Museum of Science. When our kids were little, we used to go all the time. One time Matthew said that it was such an interesting place, that he wished he could live there.

My act of Kindness: