Oliver Boldizar of Ottawa died at the age of 38 in November in India. The tragic circumstances of his death were reported by the media, but that's not the way he would have wanted to be remembered — or how his family is letting him be mourned.
In an obituary published in the Ottawa Citizen and National Post, and legacy.com this week, Boldizar is described as having died the day before his 38th birthday from "complications resulting from living life his own damn way."
As his brother, Alexander, wrote:
"He lived about as far from the mainstream as it's possible to go, free from the bonds of 21st century self-repression, a man from a different age and time. At 38, he died too young, but he spent more than half of that travelling and lived far more than double that in intensity, as his liver attested during the autopsy. He didn't drink alcohol, but he did experiment with various forms of biohacking in his search for knowledge and immortality.
He had no patience for organized structures of any sort, including school, but would have no problem doing 200,000 prostrations to get to the next stage in some Tantric teaching. He gave himself the equivalent of a PhD in several subjects, including ancient Tibetan texts, chemistry and eastern religions. He spoke English, Slovak, German, French, Spanish, Tibetan, Bengali, Hindi, Pali and possibly other languages he learned while living in caves, meditating for months at a time while villagers in India, Nepal, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, California, or any of the other odd places he lived, brought him one bowl of rice a day.
He had a beautiful mind and generous soul, and was loved as a son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew, friend, but he would come back and haunt all of us if we gave him a mainstream funeral. In his honour, we have decided not to hold a standard memorial ceremony. Instead, we will plant him illegally under a tree in the Spring, so he can laugh at the Man one last time and his body can reincarnate along with his soul."
Boldizar, who was studying in the Bengali department at Visva-Bharati, a renowned university in West Bengal, at the time of his death, appeared to live life by his own rules.
It's a beautiful thing when a family can give such a person the exact kind of memorial they would have wanted.
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