Coyote blues in Packrat

In my OD I called one of my brothers/cousins/uncles the Coyote. He had a massive heart attack and went into a coma from which he never awakened; he died at 54. No one really gets over the loss of a loved one, and now I know what it really means when someone says “Part of me died with him.” Part of me did. I am not whole, and there is still a part of me that thinks I’ll wake up one day and find all of this time without him was just a bad dream. Part of me still has to take it minute by minute some days. My mind and heart can’t accept that this is what my life is now, that I still have to learn to live without him.

He’s been on my mind lately, and today someone sent me a picture of him sitting at a drum, singing with two other older, departed uncles. They were all ornery. The Coyote looks so young and strong, and that’s how he went. I sent the picture to Cousin M with the message, “I’d ask if this is what they’re doing in Heaven, but are we sure they got there?”

When I was so sick a few years ago, relatives from far away were sure those were my last days and were planning to visit me, but I never felt close to dying (and I think I’d know) because no one, especially the Coyote, came for me. I used to joke that I was on my way over and he made me turn back around or that he and another cousin (who died at 50 and whose death made me feel as if a hole had been punched through me) were holding the pearly gates shut against my arrival. (We all used to dance and hang around each other every weekend, even at out of state pow wows.)

I’d say he didn’t want me there, bossing him around like I did here. I used to tell him, “I’m your conscience and your guide.”

Not that he ever believed it.

The arrival of my niece and granddaughter make me miss him. They’ll never know him. He’ll be a name spoken often; they’ll see pictures. But my family talks of people who had been very much in their lives and loved but who died before I was born. I don’t have the same connection to them that my older relatives do, and that’s just the cycle of life. The Coyote and our cousin were of my generation, so the older and younger family members wouldn’t have the same connection even if they were still here.

I’m just sad that my living connection to someone so dearly loved will just be anecdotes to these little girls.

I’ll snap out of it, but I have been missing him, thinking of him. He was there for nearly 50 years, from my very first days. Now he’s not, and I have to live with that.