By Laila Gislason
Though Boo wasn’t my “real” grandfather I could not miss the realness of his final days. Despite the sticky doorknob, the smell of last week’s lunch, dead flowers, and the junk pile obstacle course, I made my way to his bedside. The clutter used to spark an uncomfortable itch throughout my body, but I’d accepted it. His 98-year-old body was tired, but his spirit was very much alive as he pondered the end.
Boo, as I began calling him as a child, married my grandmother long before my birth, but it was always made known that he wasn’t blood. “He’s your step-grandfather,” my parents often clarified. When you grow up in a home of familiar strangers, it’s hard to understand how it differs, but since my “real grandfather” died when I was barely a toddler, Boo was the one I loved as such.
“There was always something,” he’d say as he pointed toward the sky. In recent months especially, we’d yo-yo back to his fascination…the time his brothers miraculously saved him from drowning in the river in Latvia, the near misses of fatal bullets in the war, his mysterious survival of tragic car accidents, the whispers to “wake up” just as his life depended on it.
Eager to capture his first-hand stories soon to be lost to eternity, I often recorded our talks. Still vivid, his attention darted from digging war trenches to engineering munitions. I once asked him how he felt amidst all of the death. After a glimpse of deep heartache, he gave a quick answer. “You know, it was hard.” It left me longing for an emotional depth that he wasn’t willing to dive into. He rarely mentioned that he fought on the Russian front for three months, in a swamp, with one set of clothing, in the winter. He was one of the few survivors.
In his final days, as he reflected, ever more fascinated by the “something more,” our conversations shifted toward the more ephemeral things in life: music, art, and what happens when you die. He even asked if I could teach him to meditate. It seems that as we get close to leaving this physical world, our grip loosens from it, like when we’re ready to drop our baggage after a long journey.
On the day of the meditation lesson, as always, the mess made it hard to get close to him. Maybe that was the point--like a protective post-war part of him still building trenches for safety, still wounded from the lack of clean clothes, the one loaf of bread per day, and the decades of silent struggle.
His body was now failing, but his mind was as aware as ever. I held his frail hand as we settled into the silence together, breathing deeply. Upon closing our eyes, I asked him to let his thinking mind rest and to shift his awareness into his body in a way he maybe hadn’t done before… to be aware of it from within rather than spotlighting attention to various parts. “Begin by feeling the tingling within your feet and let’s guide your awareness like an inner light of sensations.” From his feet, the tingling bubble of awareness passed through his bony knees, up his spine, and then into his jaw. A smile came across his face and he interjected with surprise, “There is no color in here!” We laughed.
He had slipped into thought again so I invited him to shift his awareness back down toward his heart space. I said, “It might be tender, but feel your heart. Experience it as it is right now, from the inside.” We paused here for a moment, breathing together in stillness. “Do you feel its love?” He gasped for air like it was his first breath and said, “Wow.”
As we basked in awe together of the expansive omnipresence we felt our own love, each other’s love, my grandmother’s love, everyone’s love, vibrating and interconnected with all that exists and will ever exist. Free of fear. Free of judgment. Free. When we finally opened our eyes, they locked as if for the first time, fully present, fully awake.
I could sense his awe but also the firing of his forever curious mind. I said, “It’s like being aware of myself from a higher awareness.” In this state we marveled at the nonduality of the universe exploring the wonders of consciousness, energy, vibrations, and electricity. Pondering questions like, “What is love? Is it like electricity? Is it the life force of the soul?” We laughed together for hours and re-explored his now pointless regrets and grudges from this new perspective. Finally, he asked, “If I am everything and nothing, then what was the “something” that always stepped in to save me?” His gaze peered up, and as if he had just dropped a final piece into a puzzle, a sly happy smile appeared. He didn’t need an answer. Then, almost immediately, he joked, “But really, if I had known sooner that this life was all a dream, I would have done a few things differently.” He smirked and we laughed again.
Every day until his last, we said our goodbyes from a deeper sense of closeness, and he promised to visit me from the timeless “something” and say “Boo!”
Laila Gislason is a certified mindfulness teacher and spiritual guide who awakens people through nondual techniques that point out our interconnected and loving true nature. Learn more at openquiet.com. Contact Gislason at laila@openquiet.com.
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