Delete Calendar "special day"

A "special day" birthday for a contact showed up all of a sudden several weeks ago. It was never the date for any contact anywhere on my phone or gmail contacts. ANYWHERE!  Definitely not of this person, who is now deceased. This is very upsetting as this person was a close relative who was very special to me.

I deleted the contact on my phone and on gmail. It disappeared in the computer Google calendar but not on my Pixel phone. I cleared the cleared the cache of both the calendar, contacts and gmail apps and restarted my phone - three times. Nothing makes it go away. 

I can't delete Google calendar from my phone to try and get a "fresh" calendar downloaded.

I tried everything in this old thread I found - but I did not delete my gmail account - who suggests that?

Any other suggestions? Thanks.