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My uncle Daniel died last night, in a hospital in New York City. Unlike Phap Kinh’s suicide, Daniel’s death was not unexpected. He had cancer. Was down to one lung. Had been in the Intensive Care Unit for almost a month and finally took the step from life to death.
He was an amazing man. That rare thing, a true genius of the old renaissance school. A physicist who could (and would) quote you thirty pages of Dante’s Inferno in Latin, without missing a word. Then on to sing revolutionary songs from Mexico (with flawless accent). Then to a disquisition on quantum mechanics. Then to a peal of raunchy jokes; he knew thousands of jokes, had perfect comic timing and never forgot a single funny thing in his life.
He was one of the most significant political and intellectual influences in my life, I realized a while ago. I was ten years old at the height of Watergate and Daniel lived on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. I remember being there serendipitously when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, his helicopter flying overhead and the street breaking into a spontaneous celebration upon his corrupt departure. Daniel had been a radical organizer/participant in the Students for a Democratic Society and had been at the infamous convention in Chicago where police violence shocked many in the ‘world’s greatest democracy.’
My uncle’s radical opposition to the Vietnam War and to the now seemingly modest evils of the then Republican Party inspired my early political and intellectual development.
In recent years we did not find one another – lost touch. A regret.
Two deaths in two weeks.
One utterly unexpected, violent and shocking. And one long, slow hospital death drawing life to a close.
I have a friend (who had cancer and lived to tell the tale) who likes to say, ‘none of us gets out of this alive.’ She is, of course, paraphrasing the Buddha who said that, ‘death is certain, only the timing of death is uncertain.’ And while we all know this to be true – it is always somehow a surprise. Disorienting even for those who have been meditating on death for some time.
I’m writing from Mazunte, a very lovely little village on the Pacific coast of Mexico, about as far south as you can get in the state of Oaxaca. The salt sea is crashing below the thatched hut where A and I are staying. We are deeply alive and grateful for the abundance of this moment. The ripe mango. The warm, soft air that envelops and heals all day and all night long. The magnificent frigates and elegant huge vultures and pelicans and hummingbirds all soaring and darting and pausing mid air, hugging the surface of the sea or riding the hot thermals – living their lives.
It is confusing. Life and death together in every minute. It is one thing to receive sublime teachings on the interbeing of life and death (as I did over the last several years, in and out of the monastery). It is a bit different to go from the teachings to lived experience with people who have been tremendously important.
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I was moved by your form of eulogy for Daniel, not unlike some of the thoughts your sister had on her return from her week with Daniel in the N.Y. Hospital.
Comment by Lynne young February 8, 2012 @ 10:36 amI realize that I agree with much of what you and she had to say about Daniel.
I thank you for writing and expressing feelings i shared as well as those that went beyond.
Mom