Goodbye old man

Last summer I posted on this blog about going to Vancouver to say goodbye to my 94-year-old grandfather. Stubborn guy that he was, last July he rallied and fought off the kidney infection that was expected to be the end last summer. Today he died at age 95, according to the care home staff peacefully and without pain, just slipping away in his sleep.

There has been lots of laughter and tears tonight remembering his strong and quirky character, coming to terms with the simultaneous appreciation of no-birth, no-death from experiences in practice (including practice being with him in our last visits) and also not wanting to let go of the physical experience of his body, to rub his shiny bald head and smell his old man/new baby smell and hold his hands in a way that is no longer possible.

Over the years Zeyds wrote many extremely bad poems for us kids, laboriously plonking them out on a typewriter nearly as old and as cranky as he was. They often included Yiddish curses or at the very least reference to life as a sexually transmitted disease. Shortly after I was arrested at a logging blockade in the Walbran valley he let me know Zeyds-style how simultaneously proud and annoyed he was with the whole spectacle:

Hug a tree, Hug a tree, Hug a tree, Goldberg,
Into the valley of Walbran rode she,
To save all the forests, and get me a tree.
So when I need toothpicks,
We'll know where they be.

Goodbye old man. I miss you. Thank you for everything.