Allen Ginsberg’s Parinirvana

Allen Ginsberg, Bob Rosenthal, James Grauerholz, Michael McClure, Peter Orlovsky – from Colin Still’s No More To Say And Nothing To Weep For – An Elegy For Allen Ginsberg 1926-1997 (1997)

Saturday April 5th – Allen Ginsberg’s Parinirvana.

Two Perspectives on Allen’s Last Hours

First, Gelek Rinpoche

We lost Allen (Ginsberg), but believe me, he died very well – extremely well. We would be very lucky to go like he did. He was absolutely ready. It is interesting. It looked like he was always thinking that he had another ten years to live. Last year, after the summer retreat, I told Allen that when someone is getting sick and they are told that they are going to die, then it is very difficult to talk to them about it. So it is very important to talk to people about death when they are well. You never know when you are going to go. You may have plans to live for another ten years, but you should always be prepared to go. Allen said that he was always scared of dying. He said, “If somebody told me that I was going to die now, I don’t know how I would take it.” We talked about all his practices and I was then able to share with him the Uncommon Inconceivable Practice of Vajrayogini. Normally you are not supposed to give that practice to people before they have done a retreat. But then for Allen to do a retreat at this point would have been extremely difficult, so somehow I made an exception, seeking the permission of the lama and the yidam. Allen did spend quite a lot of time doing that practice. I tried to work out a very simple practice for him to do and he always had his hand-written notes with him and he tried to read through this practice daily.

When he finally got the news that he was terminally ill, he took it very well – better than me! It took me two days to come to terms with it. I was in Mexico when I got the news from him. It sort of spoiled my holiday – but he was very excited, thinking that now the time had come. And as things started to function, his life started to become something like a celebration. The directions he was giving to his staff and his closer friends pointed in that direction. He was very excited and started to call everybody, telling them that “Look, I have incurable cancer and I am going to go now!”

From that day on, for a week he was very excited and quickly made all the arrangements that he wanted to make and although he accepted that he was going to die and would not continue, he knew that he still had a lot of unpublished manuscripts of his poetry and there would have been something like six more years to work on all of that and he now gave instructions what to do with all this material. He also had tremendous numbers of photographs and gave instructions what to do with these and then finally he was ready. Suddenly he then had a little stroke and congestive heart failure. That was good. Congestive heart failure is the best way to go, because you don’t have any pain, you just fill up with water and that is it. Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche always said that we all wish to go easily and the easiest way was by maintaining the water in the body.And that’s what Allen had. If you think about it, it was only that Friday that he was in a semi-coma and Saturday morning at two thirty-nine a.m the death process started. We reached his place on Friday afternoon at about five p.m. and when we walked into his room there were so many people! Some people were drinking tea, some were eating, there was food on the table and people were coming and going and all these very famous people were there. It was really like a celebration. Nobody was crying, but they just went up to him and looked at him and then went back and talked to each other. Some people were reading. His cousin, who is a doctor, (Joel Gaidemak) was there too. At first he forgot his stethoscope, so he had to go down and get it, so that everybody knew that he was the doctor. Then he explained to everybody what was happening to Allen and what happened before and why and what was going to happen next. When there were no more questions, he went on to explain what the latest books were saying about that condition. It was very interesting. Allen had a very open life and in the same way, a very open death too. Everybody was there, going in and out – sort of a celebration, really.
From our point of view, the first thing we did when we arrived was to do the Lama Chöpa. We did it very slowly and by the end of the practice I thought he was very close to going. but after twelve p.m (midnight) we took a break and went to sleep until at two forty-five a.m. Kathy woke me up and we went back in and by three a.m he was obviously in the dissolution process and we did Vajrayogini self initiation. By about seven a.m to seven-thirty a.m. there were only few people there. It was very funny. When good opportunities come, there are never many people around. It was the perfect timing. I did the Vajrayogini initiation for Allen and we also did the five-deity Chakrasamvara self-initiation, and by eleven thirty a.m, it was clear that his consciousness had left the body.

Normally, when the consciousness leaves the body, there are signs, like water leaves the body. In the case of Gelong-la, who died in the retreat [Editorial note – the monk Gelong-la died at the Jewel Heart Winter Retreat in 1995, Allen (and Philip Glass) were in attendance], he had blood coming out of the nostrils. Ken [sic] was saying later that he had seen blood on the pillowcase. At the time, I just said that the blood must be from a cut to his head when he had shaved it. But in Allen’s case there was no blood coming from the nostrils and because there were many people around I could not look at his lower parts, which was even more difficult because they had put diapers on him. It would not have looked good to all these people. Before eleven thirty, his head was still upright on the pillow and after eleven thirty,it was down completely. That is a clear sign. Immediately after that, his temples became hollow and his coma Afterwards, all these people came and talked to me and they had all these different theories about why Allen had died. One of his cousins said it was because he worried so much about Peter Orlovsky. Another person had the idea that with our prayers we were pushing Allen out of the life. That’s why I thought I better explain a little bit what happened. There is no question that Allen was concentrating on the Mahamudra and Vajrayogini and that is how he went. It was a very successful death. Of course, to us it is a great loss, no question about that, not just for us, but for society as a whole. However, for him, he began his own celebration and it really was a celebration. And I probably should not say that we are very happy, but on the other hand, we all have to die and you could not have a better death than that. We all wish to continue but we cannot. I said to Allen when he gave me the news, “We always think we could go on for some more years, but look at your life, you are seventy years old and have made a tremendous contribution.” Aura (Glaser) keeps telling me it was a five lifetimes contribution. I told Allen, “I don’t think that in the (19)60s you thought you were going to live that long.” And he said, “No, definitely not. If I had thought so, I would have taken care of myself a little better.” Then I said, “You are seventy now and although it is not a very long life, like one-hundred-and-fifteen or so, it is also not a short life either. So it is okay.”
In his last days, he called a lot of people and said good-bye to them.He definitely called Philip (Glass) on Sunday, thanking him and saying good-bye. Actually, Philip did not see him after that. Later, Allen rang me and said, “Rinpoche, I wrote my own funeral poem, it looks quite good, shall I read it to you?” But I did not want him to read it. Philip was there with me, so Allen talked to him and said, “You listen to this!” and then he read his poem to him and of course it is his “Gone, Gone, Gone” poem. At the funeral it was supposed to be read out, but nobody knew it, except Philip. Luckily, he had listened to Allen and remembered it. So he recited it at the funeral. Everybody respected him, he was very open and nice and made a tremendous contribution to society. So we should remember Allen in that way. That is my suggestion.Gone Gone Gone

Allen holding an abbreviated version of his poem “Gone, Gone, Gone” (Gone gone gone / gone with yesterday / gone gone gone /all gone old & gray / Gone, gone, gone /Gone to graveyard play / with spells & / Tombstones Gay!”) January 1997. Photo: c.Richard Nagler, used with permission

Then this first-hand account from Rosebud Feliu-Pettet

April 4 Friday evening – Peter Hale calls and asks me to come quickly, Allen is in a coma, dying. Pull on my sneakers and taxi down, trying to keep calm breathing, trying to arrive in a state of peace. Fifteen minutes after Pete’s call he opens the door to the loft and I go in to join those already gathered. I went and embraced big Peter Orlovsky, and Eugene, Allen’s brother. About twenty friends, talking in low voices, looking lost, comforting each other.  After being diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer the previous Friday at Beth Israel Hospital, Allen had been told he had maybe two to five months to live. When I heard the news, for some reason, I felt strongly that it would not be that long – I felt that he would go very soon. He had come back home Wednesday in good spirits, organizing things as ever, making plans for the coming days. But someone (I forget who; perhaps it was Bob Rosenthal) had said that Allen personally felt that he had very little time left. A month or two, he thought. So Wednesday he was busy, writing and making phone calls to his friends all over the world, saying goodbye. Amiri Baraka said Allen called him and said,”I’m dying, do you need any money?
But Thursday he was much weaker, he could hobble from bed to chair only with difficulty. There was a phone call from Italy [Editorial note – from Fernanda Pivano], in the middle of it Allen begins to vomit, throws up right there on the phone! “Funny”, he says, “never done that before!”  Said he was very tired and wanted to go to sleep. He fell asleep and later that night had a seizure and slipped into a coma. He was alone.
In the morning, Bob Rosenthal discovered him unconscious and called the Hospice doctor who came and told him that Allen had most likely had a stroke and hours to live. The task of notifying family and friends began.
Everybody feared that, as word spread, there’d be a huge throng appearing at the loft, but that wasn’t the case. People came and went quietly during the afternoon. Bob, Pete Hale, Bill Morgan, and Kay Wright, [the accountant], the office-staff, were busy constantly at the phones, making and receiving calls. Shelley Rosenthal and Rani Singh helping with everything that needed doing. Eugene and several neices and nephews of Allen’s consoling each other. Larry Rivers, down from his apartment upstairs, wandering around forlornly in his pink white and blue striped pajamas. George and Anna Condo and their little girl. Francesco and Alba Clemente. Beloved friends of Allen’s. Patti Smith sitting in tears with Oliver Ray and her young daughter, Bob and Shelley’s sons, Aliah and Isaac. Marc Israel  and David Greenberg, two of Allen’s young boyfriends, Philip Glass and June Leaf, Robert Frank, Simon Pettet, Andrew Wylie, Roy Lichtenstein, Steven Bornstein,who had flown up from Florida. A few others. I don’t remember who all was there.
I went to the back of the loft and Raymond Foye stood looking pale and so sad. I told him he must be very blessed, he had spent so much time giving support and love to the dying – Henry Geldzahler, (Herbert) Huncke, Harry Smith. “Yes, but this is the big one, the hardest”, he said. Allen lay in a narrow hospital bed beside the windows overlooking Fourteenth Street. There were two almost invisible tubes coming out of his nose, attached to a portable small oxygen tank on the floor. His head was raised up on a couple of big striped pillows and he looked tiny and frail, thin arms with bruised veins from hospital tests sticking out from his Jewel Heart t-shirt. Head to the side, slight shadows under the eyes. I had walked through the loft, people whispering greetings, hugging, telling me all that had happened. But still not really prepared for the sight of him. The windows were open, curtains waving softly. His breathing was deep, slow, very labored, a snoring sound. “Hey, Allen, wake up!” Joel Gaidemak, his cousin and doctor, was there constantly, and a young lady nurse sat in the corner reading, occasionally getting up to check on heart and pulse, or administer morphine for congestion. Gelek Rinpoche said he thought Allen might last the night. Joel didn’t think so.
A few chairs were set up nearby, and there was a big white leather Salvation Army sofa, of which he was so proud. People sat, or at intervals went to sit beside the bed and hold his hand or whisper to him and kiss him, his hand or cheek or head. An altar had been set up along one side of the loft and Gelek Rinpoche and the other monks sat chanting and praying, the sound so soothing constantly in the background, bells tinkling. A faint scent of flowers and incense hung in the air.
I had a little throw-away Woolworth’s camera and Gregory Corso asked me to take a picture of him with Allen. He knelt beside the cot and placed his arm over Allen”like that picture, or statue, of Adonais, right?”
There was a medical chart, a picture of the human skeleton, hanging over the bed. Bob said Allen had put it there, half as a joke, half as a reminder. And Allen’s beautiful picture of Whitman (that had hung in the kitchen on 12th Street) gazing down from the wall at the other dear bearded poet in the bed below. As it got late, many went home to try and catch a little sleep. It was around eleven. Bob and Pete were just playing it by ear, deciding that anyone who wanted to stay would find a place, on the floor if necessary. Peter Orlovsky was taking photos and I felt a little uncomfortable, the idea of taking pictures at this time, but I figured, hey, if it was you, Allen would be the first one through the door camera in hand!  Eventually, Eugene leaned over, held Allen’s hand, whispered “Goodbye little Allen, goodbye little Allen. I’ll be back later. See you soon”. He kissed him and left. And Gregory – Gregorio! – too, telling us to call him at once if there was any change.
Joel had said that there was no way to know how long it would be, minutes or hours, surely not days. I had felt from the minute I saw Allen there that it would be very soon. I sat at the foot of the bed where I had spent the last few hours, holding his feet, rubbing them gently from time to time . An occasional cigarette break – the little guest bathroom by the office area was set up as the smoker’s lounge. Bob and Pete and Bill were as strong and remarkable as ever, supporting everyone, keeping a sense of humor, and constantly dealing with the dozens of phone-calls, faxes, and the visitos as they came and sent. They’d had a few days for the news to sink in, but they were dealing with – literally – hundreds of people over the phone or in person who had just found out and were in the first stages of stunned, disbelieving grief.
I had remained at the bedside and it was now after midnight. I could not believe he still hung on, the breathing so difficult, the lungs slowly filling with fluid. Labored breathing (gulps for air – like those gulps he’d made when he was singing – almost like he was reciting poetry in his sleep). Those who had ben there all day were exhausted. It was down to a few now. Bob and Pete and Bill Morgan. Peter Orlovsky ao bravely dealing with his pain, strong. Beverly [Isis] holding his hand. David and Mark. Patti and Oliver, there together all day trying to be brave and sometimes giving wat to red-eyed tears. Simon Pettet sitting beside me for hours.
Allen’s feet felt cooler than they had been earlier. I sat remembering the thirty-three years I’d knowh hm, lived with him, my second father.
And still he breathed, but softer now.
Around two o’clock, everyone decided to try and get some rest. Bob and Joel lay down in Allen’s big bed near the cot where he lay, everyone found a sofa, or somewhere to stretch out.
Simon and I sat, just watching his face. Everyone was amazed at how beautiful he looked – all lines of stress and age smoothed – he looked patriarchal and strong. I had never seen him so handsome. The funny-looking little boy had grown into this most wonderful-looking man.(He would have encouraged photos if he had known how wonderful he looked!) But so tiny! He seemed as fragile as a baby in his little t-shirt.
The loft was very quiet. Most were resting, half-asleep. Suddenly Allen began to shake, a small convulsion wracked his body. I called out, and Joel and Bob sat up and hurried over. I called louder, and everybody else came running.Iy was about two-fifteen. Joel examined him, pulse, etc., and said that his vital signs were considerably slower, he had had another seizure. The breathing went on, weaker. His feet were cooler. Everyone sat or stood close to the little bed. The loft was dim and shadowy; only a single low light shining down on him. It lent a surreal, almost theatrical, look to the corner of the loft. Peter Orlovsky bent over and kissed his head, saying “Goodbye Darling”.
And then suddenly a remarkable thing happened. A tremor went through him, and slowly, impossibly, he began to raise his head. He weakly rose until he was sitting almost upright and his left arm lifted and extended. Then his eyes opened very slowly and very wide. The pupils were wildly dilated. I thought I saw a look of confusion or bewilderment. His head began to turn very very slowly and his eyes seem to glance around him, gazing on each of us in turn. His eyes were so deep, so dark, but Bob said  that they were empty of sight. His mouth opened, and we all heard as he seemed to struggle to say something, but only a soft, low sound, a weak “Aaah,” came from him. Then his eyes began to close and he sank back onto the pillow. The eyes shut fully. He continued, then, to struggle through a few more gasping breaths, and his mouth fell open in an O. Joel said that these were the final moments, the O of the mouth the sign of approaching death. I still continued to stroke his feet and thin little legs, but the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is to not touch the body after death, so I kissed him one final time and then let go.
At two-thirty-nine, Joel checked for vital signs and announced that the heart, so much stronger than anyone knew, had stopped beating. A painless and gentle death. The thin blue sheet was pulled up to his chin, and Peter Hale brought over a tiny cup and spoon, and placed a few drops of a dark liquid between Allen’s lips. It was part of the Buddhist ritual – “the last food” Bob put his hand over Allen’s eyes, and said the Shema. We all sat quietly in the dim light, each withour own thoughts, saying goodbye.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *