I’ve been sending out greeting cards. So many people I appreciate so deeply. And spring is here! Reason enough to celebrate when tiny flowers are pushing their way out of the dark earth.
One card said:
I am always with you.
It's true. But how could I give that card to anyone? What would they think? It's too profound a sentiment to buy for $2.50 at the shop. It requires a whole refiguring of conventional ideas of personality and the universe. You can't just put that in an envelope. Saying this type of thing is impossible, even for me, who is more and more expressive on more and more forbidden topics all the time.
But it's true. Memories of eating lunch with Hikari on a Tassajara ridgeline, or bouncing on oversized pillows with my sister, are vividly, vividly available. Usually they come for a visit after several days of sessin, when I'm trying to focus on the present. But they're IN there.
And beyond the storehouse of personality, "I am always with you" is true because the "something" which truly loves--which resonates and magnifies and opens to another being-- transcends this meaty body and self-centered little thought system. This person's personality isn't around for "always". So "I" and "you" are not the limited conventional selves.
It's worth finding that "I" that can never be apart from someone you love. Or love that fits the following:
Many rivers cannot quench love, nor floods drown it.
(Song of Solomon 8:7)
Love, and togetherness, outside of time and space. It's hard to buy a card that purports to talk about it, and it's not easy (I'm finding) to try to write a blog entry about it.
But I want to talk about someone I really love.
February 28 was the death-day of my almost-grandfather, Eldon Riddell, the Scots-descended sheep farmer whose family homesteaded in this area; they’re major landowners to this day. My parents did the back-to-the-land thing in the early 70s, and they were helped immeasurably by older folks who knew how to do things the old way.
As a child, I remember making repeated visits to consult with these old farmers. These people, none of them under sixty, were our friends and neighbors, farmers and beekeepers, fruit growers, and one rascal. These were larger-than-life figures to my small self. Their very names bear the scent of a lost era: Eldon Riddell, Fred Elliot, Wendell DeHaven, Art Bliven, Ray Adams, Marilyn Miller. They taught my parents to graft trees, to feed pregnant ewes properly, to mix cement, to keep ants from invading beehives–and that the injunction to love thy neighbor need not necessarily extend to trusting him. But that’s another story.
Of all these, Eldon was the greatest, most solid and kind individual. He and his wife Lora drove a gigantic sea-green Cadillac, lived in a vinyl-sided house, and gave us our first television–a mammoth piece of furniture. There was an old violin he would play, but rarely.
We would drop by unannounced, come in the back door and into the rust-and-yellow kitchen. Or trot out to the big white barn, where we’d find Eldon in his signature overalls, working with the sheep. They were known all over as the finest-looking animals in the Willamette Valley: not only were they healthy and happy (the company of a barn full of contented sheep is supremely comforting), but their conformation and wool quality was also exceptional. Eldon would regularly visit New Zealand and import Border Leicesters—beautiful intelligent animals with Roman noses and long silky locks of wool.
My little sister and I called Eldon “Grandpa” because our surviving grandparents were far away and, until we were a little older, somewhat estranged. I know my parents had their own relationships with him; I know they relied on him and trusted his advice. He raised roses as a hobby; he and my mother often compared notes.
On memorial day, my mother would cut flowers from our garden to give to Eldon. He had plenty of his own; his car was filled with flowers, but he needed a lot. He would visit graves all over the area. Many were so old, so otherwise forgotten, that his flowers were the only ones.
Finally, it was his turn. When Eldon fell ill and died, I was ten and eleven years old. It was my first exposure to extreme sickness, and then death. I have never seen my father cry like he did at Eldon’s funeral.
In the years since then, I grew up and moved to California. My parents divorced, sold the farm, and moved away. Eventually, the crooked path of life and practice drew me back to Oregon, and to the areas I frequented as a child.
So, I’m freshly out of sesshin, the flowers are pushing themselves into the world, the earth is waking up. And I realize, it’s February 28. Eldon’s day.
At the Safeway, they’ve gotten the first tulips. I know without checking that they’re from Mt Vernon, Washington. My mother lives there now; it’s the tulip capital of the world. (All tulips are from there, and all tulip bulbs. Even ones that say ‘from Holland’. They ship them there and then they ship them back. Or so I’m told.)
I buy two bunches of tulips, mix the colors, and save half for the zendo.
Dusk is falling as I start driving north, up towards my old life, towards Monmouth and the Pine Crest cemetery. It’s a beautiful ridge with tall trees, half a mile off the highway. Eldon’s family once owned the property, and they still control most of the surrounding land.
In that graveyard are graves from some of the earliest settlers, people who came west on the wagon trains. More recent immigrants are just beginning to be buried there: people from Mexico putting down roots, sending their children to the schools, and planting their dead in this earth. Eldon’s family, over four generations, is there as well.
Eldon’s grave is exactly where it’s always been. There’s Lora. A son and their oldest daughter have passed too.
In addition to the flowers, I have brought three sticks of good incense, and a Droste chocolate pastille, al little orange-flavored disk of fine milk chocolate. It will double as an incense burner: I’ve carefully bored three little holes into it.
I place the flowers. I light the incense and get them stuck in the chocolate without it melting too much. And I stand there, watching the light fade across the valley, watching the clouds. When I was little I took so much natural beauty for granted, but even then I found the Willamette Valley clouds heart-stoppingly beautiful. Darkness overtakes the hills I know so well, and the glints of headlights travel the highway down below. I’m crying.
I don’t intone anything dharanis or gathas for Eldon, much as I wish for his soul’s repose. He was one of those Christians who opens your heart to the whole faith; once the longest-serving member of Monmouth’s First Christian Church. Palms together, I just say that I love him, that I miss him.
Standing there, I realize that he taught me a tremendous amount about dedication and integrity and love, just by being himself. So I say that too. I was still a child when he died, but I desperately miss a benevolent older man, whose warm smell and scratchy cheek are still close at hand, who helped my parents, and who adopted us, in his way.
I go back to the car. I’m not thinking of anything. Llater I will reflect on how we create community and family. On how we find kindred souls because we need to take care of others, and to be taken care of.
In the failing light, I see the dark mass of flowers, and very dimly, the tiny glints of the incense, pouring fragrance into the night, long after I drive away. I take backroads home, to Corvallis.
OSU DEPARTMENT INDUCTS MEMBERS OF WITHYCOMBE CLUB
05-28-04
CORVALLIS - A long list of exceptional Oregon State University animal sciences alumni and others who have given outstanding service to the state's livestock industry were honored today by the OSU Department of Animal Sciences as charter members of a new honorary association called the Withycombe Club.
The induction ceremony was part of an awards luncheon held on the OSU campus. The event included presentation of a large donation to the OSU Animal Sciences Department.
"The department established the club as a way to give special recognition to individuals who have made significant contributions to animal agriculture," said Jim Males, department head. "Launching the Withycombe Club is also an opportunity to celebrate our long and productive history as one of the first departments formed, established in 1907, in the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences."
Posthumous inductees:
Eldon Riddell was a third generation
Willamette Valley sheep producer. His
father was an original importer of the
Romney breed. At the time of Eldon's death
in 1985, his Romney, Border Leicester, and
Suffolk flocks were some of the best known
in North America. He regularly imported
Romney and Border Leicester rams from
New Zealand and his Border X Romney
rams were sought after by commercial
producers throughout western Oregon.
Eldon's son, David, is carrying on the
tradition of breeding productive rams for
Oregon's commercial flocks.
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