Hi everyone,
It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 401.
On Tuesday my dad died so I thought I'd like to talk about him a little bit and a little about what he taught me and in the context of some of the mindfulness teachings.
So thank you for coming today to listen.
In the beginning of mindfulness,
There's,
Oh and here he is,
There he is.
So in the beginning of mindfulness there's mindfulness of the body and one way to pay attention to the body is through the elements of the body which there are four,
Earth,
Water,
Fire,
And wind.
The flesh and bones are the earth,
The liquids,
The blood,
The phlegm,
The tears are the water,
The heat and coolness of the body,
Its temperature is the fire,
The breath we breathe in and out all of our lives is the wind.
And there's much more and it's a teaching that I've largely skipped until now and then on Tuesday,
I don't know,
This teaching just came immediately alive for me so I thought I would talk about it and talk about my dad.
So my dad of course was all four as are we all.
He had flesh and bones,
He had the liquids of the body although I don't ever recall seeing him cry.
He had heat and cold,
More cold in the last year.
He tended to keep that French newsboy cap that he used to wear perched on his pretty wispy head right up until bedtime.
And of course he was breathing until he wasn't.
So as I said I haven't paid much attention to this teaching of the four elements of the body until just now but it seems like the perfect way to say something about my dad.
So in terms of earth,
I wouldn't say my dad was a salt of the earth kind of guy because salt of the earth for me,
It conjures up images of sailors and someone building their own house or plowing a field and dad never did any of those things.
But he was a strong,
Solid person.
When I was little he could do anything,
He could open anything,
He could carry anything,
Including anything that was troubling me,
He could carry anything on his shoulders for me.
He was that kind of strong,
That kind of solid.
And physically his bones were strong,
I think he broke a leg once in his late 20s and that was it for the ski slopes for him.
But he was otherwise never injured,
He was never sick other than cold or flu until his heart gave out and it wasn't really his heart.
His heart was so full of love and at ease that I know it wasn't really his heart that gave out,
It was just a valve in the heart,
You know,
And everything has an expiry date and that valve had an expiry date that was mismatched to his actual heart,
Right?
It was the wrong part for such a big heart.
He was water too,
Of course,
Inside and out,
He was partly comprised of water like all of us,
But also he was a creature of the water for much of his life.
He was a swimmer and he encouraged me to be a swimmer.
When I was on the swim team for a minute as a little kid,
I won my races for him.
When I spent months swimming every day in the oceans of Southeast Asia,
I thought of my dad.
When I organized where I lived as a young lawyer around whether there was a pool to jump into each morning,
It was because of dad.
He swam,
Dad swam until late in his life,
So in a way,
Water was his element.
He wasn't very fiery,
Classically,
Of course,
He had heat and cold,
More cold as he got older and that valve got weaker.
But he wasn't a fiery person in the emotional sense,
He didn't get worked up about much.
He paid attention to politics and the state of the world his whole life.
He wasn't active in politics,
But he cared a lot and he taught me to care.
He taught me to question what I read to examine it from all sides,
Not so much out of skepticism,
But out of curiosity.
So if there are times when I'm less skeptical and more curious,
That's from my dad.
The times when skepticism gets the better of me,
I'm still learning those lessons.
He had no temper that I recall.
My stepmom,
Sally,
Says he could get mad,
But really never did.
And I can't remember ever seeing it.
The times my mother and I would have knockdown,
Drag out fights,
He was the peacemaker.
The day I ran away at age,
What,
10 or so to sit on a big rock by the beach down the block from our house,
He walked out to the rock and sat down and he wasn't mad,
He just listened.
The day I got arrested by the MPs and hauled into the Presidio police station for cutting high school and a few other things I shouldn't have been doing at the beach that day,
I guess he was mad,
But still he listened.
And he taught me to do that too,
To the extent that I do,
To listen to other people.
To a casual observer,
It might have seemed as if he didn't have his own opinions,
But actually he did.
He was just usually more interested in other people's opinions than his own.
There's a mindfulness teaching that says,
Don't side with yourself.
And he didn't.
And he tried to teach me that too,
But I'm still learning.
What he did have a fire was a lot of love.
He was full to the brim with love.
He loved my brother and me to bits.
He adored our kids.
He loved our mom until he couldn't.
And he loved Sally until the end.
I think he knew my brother and me so well,
Of course,
That we were just part of his heart.
There was no difference between Andrew and love or me and love or my dad.
It was Sally,
With Emily and Toby,
My stepmom,
My daughter,
My nephew.
His love took on more of a marveling quality.
He would look at one of them or share something about them and he would get this smile on his face,
Kinda like the one on the image.
But more enigmatic,
A little more Mona Lisa.
And he would shake his head as if,
How did I get so lucky to have these people in my life?
Yeah,
He did that with other people he loved too.
His love was his real fire.
But in some ways,
My dad more than anything was like the wind.
And I don't mean that damp summer wind blowing in off the ocean into San Francisco where he raised us,
Or those great howling winds of western Nebraska where he spent his childhood.
What I mean is like the gentle breezes of summer that just ruffle the leaves in Scott's bluff,
His beloved hometown.
In Portland where he and Sally lived a beautiful life for so long.
At Tahoe where we spent our childhoods in Sonoma,
Where I live now.
Dad lived lightly,
Like that kind of wind,
Biking the prairies as a boy,
Working as a shopkeeper in San Francisco,
Loving all of us no matter what.
Loving Sally with a kind of wonder and gratitude,
Loving his grandkids like these precious gifts he never expected to have.
Living without expectations or demands,
Lightly,
Like a breeze.
And when Sally called me early Tuesday morning to say Dad was gone,
He was gone like that too.
There wasn't a clap of thunder,
There wasn't a huge shift of earth.
He wasn't a great leader who would be mourned in state or a great mountain whose absence would leave a gaping hole in some landscape.
He was just Dad,
Grandpa,
Louie,
Leaving a hole in our hearts,
Leaving us to miss him and look for him in all the ways he had touched our lives.
And really made us all into who we are today without taking any credit for any of it,
Leaving us the way he had lived,
Like a breeze in summer,
Here and now gone.
Thank you for letting me say a few words about my dad.
May his memory be a blessing.
Let's say.
So beginning by finding the posture that most supports you today.
And beginning with that earth element of feeling the body,
Sitting or standing or lying down.
That sense of solidness,
That earth element,
The bones,
The flesh,
The heaviness that is the body.
The body in whatever posture you find your body in.
Sensing into how the body and the earth are not different.
They're made up of the same elements.
They are elemental.
We are elemental.
And another element we can pay attention to in this body is water.
Just the simple sensation of the mouth.
The mouth is wet.
Sensing into the element of water in the mouth,
In the eyes.
My eyes have been wet a lot lately.
But even on a day of no consequence at all for you,
You can feel the wetness in the eyes.
Most of the weight of the body is water.
Feeling how the body is full of fluid.
We're really mostly fluid.
The more grounded we can be and the more fluid we can be,
Probably the better.
So sensing into those two elements,
Earth and water.
Another element is fire.
How warm are you right now,
The body,
Or cool?
We have an internal heater in our bodies that keeps us warm,
Keeps us cool.
And I also think our emotional body is warm and cool by turns.
So just taking a couple of moments to explore the fire element in the body for you right now.
And then the fourth element,
The element of wind.
The breath,
Paying attention to the breath flowing in and out of the body.
And also the way that we could be buffeted by the winds in our lives.
And also by the way that sometimes maybe we feel like we are becoming a whirlwind or modeling that calm,
Gentle breeze.
Thank you.
Thank you so much,
Everyone,
For being here and letting me share a little bit about my dad.
Take good care and see you all next week.
