Paterfamilias went home ...
Ralph Gabriel Walking Bull, Sr.
March 9, 1933 - April 11, 2008
Legacy of generations.
We lost my father this morning.
He had a sudden heart attack and could not be resuscitated. I feel like my world is gone, not like it's been destroyed or ravaged, just that it's gone and nowhere to be found. And now I feel hollow. I've done the crying bit, uncontrollable in fact. He died on my brother's living room floor and the paramedics left him with a breathing tube in his mouth and covered up to the neck with a bed sheet. When I saw his sprawled body lying there, I lost it.
My brother and I cried and when it was all said and done, he told me I had to say goodbye and a prayer. I kissed him on his cold forehead and said a prayer, thanking God for allowing him to be with us on his last day, to allow him to know he's always been loved and to be at peace, free from his disease and suffering.
I'm still in the grief process. I don't know where exactly, but it's somewhere between bargaining and magical thinking. Even though I saw him lying there, dead, I still somehow think it's a horrid scheme. I expect to go out to the house tonight to be with my family and he'll come shuffling into the living room. But that's not going to happen.
While I really am grateful he came back to us to die, I only got one hour with him. Granted, it's more than most people get, but I still feel robbed. If I didn't have a job, I could've gone home and hung out with him all night and this morning. For some reason, I always imagined his death in a hospital bed, where he could tell me all his secrets and I could take down all his stories. But to be taken so suddenly, I feel unprecedentedly angry, sad and regretful.
Telling the children was the hardest part. My nephew Jacob is the closest to my father and my niece Aleah shook uncontrollably when we told her. They're better now, in manageable spirits, probably a front, but a good front nonetheless.
Now comes the hard part of wake arrangements, the cremation and deciding what stays and what goes. At least I will have the presence of South Dakota and my family to comfort me. We will comfort each other. And the pain will ease as we measure time in months, years and decades, but it won't ever go away.
I love and miss you, Daddy.