I will continue on where my story left off but from my point of view. I think I wrote the first part of this story in a way so I could distance myself long enough that I could write it, but I am ready now.
The days that followed my father’s death were a mixture of family and friends, tears, wine, karaoke and planning. I will never forget the song I leaned on to get me through the first few days of shock, grief and pain, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’. Belted out by Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, it was and is my saving grace. With a mixture of my loud voice and unending tears, I sang that song in every quiet moment I had to myself.
Those moments were, however, very few and far between, as we had an average of 15-20 people at any given moment in the house, but the company was nice and it was necessary, at least for me.
I have noticed that we distract ourselves with the planning of funerals. It’s a small reprieve the Creator grants us so we don’t get forever lost in our pain. Mind you some still do but I wanted us to plan this right for our Dad so we could honour him, Gilbert Cheechoo style.
My younger brothers were a source of love that fit in perfectly with all of our grieving hearts. They were the 2 youngest of us 10 siblings, and they brought me out of the dark. They brought me out of that dark place I wanted to stay in, live in, cry in, breathe in and never return from. They do anything specific, they just had to be them and I just needed to be around them. One day soon I will thank them for that, when I can explain to them exactly how they saved me.
I won’t speak for my grown siblings when it comes to our Dad but I can say that they saved me too. When everything was bleak, we had our bond, our love for one another.
Before I continue on, I have to talk about one thing- the negativity that can arise when death occurs. It may have surrounded certain pieces of my Dad’s death, but is purposely going unnoticed in all parts of my story. Why? You may ask. It’s because everyone all around, including me, was reacting, not as themselves, but as the shocked form of themselves. We were all not ourselves and I plead forgiveness for my ‘unself’. If negativity still lingers for anyone, my Dad’s death did not contribute directly to that but perpetuated feelings that were already there.
There… now that I got that out of the way, I can continue on.
My youngest daughter who was with me when the accident occurred cried for days, and I cried along with her. She cried in the arms of my Dad’s partner. She cried for the boys who would never get to know their father in this life. She cried every time we talked about him. But fortunately, she found distraction in the loving chaos of our house and when a good friend took her off and on over the next week.
My older girls were a wonderful source of laughter along with my Dad’s step-daughters and niece-in-law. Although we we didn’t know any of them really well, it didn’t stop them from playing and smoking and talking with each other, and being there to support us older ladies who needed it. I will always love them for that.
I received a card from my step-sister afterwards that had me crying (yes, I am a crier) but it was something that I didn’t expect. Kitchi-miigwetch Jayde, I love you. I don’t know if I ever told you that.
People were coming. We had to clean the house. Drink a bottle or two of wine a night. Prepare, prepare, prepare. And I believe I drank at least a bottle of wine a night for the next 7 days. Or maybe few weeks, after. But we gotta do, what we gotta do.
So, the million dollar question–how did we do it? How did we plan a funeral for someone with 10 brothers and sisters, 10 children, and many relations?
Well. I would like to think that we did it by focusing on my Dad, or —“The World According to Gilbert Cheechoo!” I told my Dad many times over the years that I was going to write a book titled that, and he loved it. His ego took a big boost the day I proposed that book title to him.
I smile now as I write this, thinking back on that memory, hearing his voice and his laugh. I can still picture the look on his face.
All of the family contributed something but we didn’t have a ‘traditional’ funeral… it was a Traditional funeral. And we had to make it as extraordinary as my Dad was, as someone who challenged the very fabric of our mainstream thinking and pushed us to be woke, to look behind the curtain and pull it down. We had to, it was the only way.
Family and friends continued to come and go, with some faces we had not seen in a very long time. We all shed tears, held onto each other tight and condolences, oh how they are bitter-sweet, but always welcome. And those little boys, still maintained as a comfort.
But we still hadn’t seen everyone yet. We were still in Timmins planning, remotely with family up north, as we waited for his body to be released.
As it got closer to us packing everyone up and heading north to bring Dad home, we received a phone call. It was the funeral home. They told us they couldn’t release the body without a positive ID, which meant that family would have to identify him or we would have to wait beyond our plans to bring him home until the Coroner could make the ID with dental records.
We were semi devastated as we did not want this process to linger on.
We had plans. The funeral home had already refused our request to see our Dad as the accident had been a rather bad one, so we were in a dilemma.
Then Eric stepped up.
He had been a cop for almost 40 years and had seen more bodies than any of us put together. It was decided Eric would be the one, so we called and let the funeral home know we were coming.
After Eric and I got to the funeral home, it took, what seemed like hours to me, to positively identify my Dad. I waited in the front Lobby for him until he finally came walking down the hall and we left.
Afterward, I had so many questions, which he answered patiently. Not that I don’t doubt that everything was handled well, but when he told me that it was definitely my Dad and that he could tell it was him, I cried. I cried from relief that we knew it was him for sure, and from extreme sadness that we knew it was him for sure. I also cried for Eric for having to see my Dad that way, and out of extreme thanks and grateful that he did that for us, so that my Dad’s journey, and ours, would not be delayed.
To be continued…
I have purposely skipped over parts of the full story, like the Memorial that was put up, and other smaller stories within the story that I would like to keep to myself for now. I will share them in time. Meegwetch.
CreeGirl in a lonely world. 