Winnie Loves was my father's best friend and Koda. He told me many stories about his relationship and great love for Winne. Every time we went to Wakpala, where my father was born, we would go to the cemetery and pray and offer some tobacco at each grave. At each gravestone, he would tell me stories about the relatives buried there.
He always said, " Son, the veil between this physical world and the infinite spiritual worlds is very thin. Our relatives in the "Other Side Camp" are always praying for and inspiring us, just as we must always pray for them and their spiritual advancement in the Celestial Worlds to come."
About six years before my beloved father passed to the "Other Side Camp," he called me in tears. He told me he had been having a series of reoccurring lucid dreams. In the dream, he was riding down a grassy hill by Oak Creek near Wakpala, where he was born.
When he looked in front of him, he saw another rider who seemed strangely familiar. Then the rider looked back, and it was Winnie.
Without needing words, they communicated very deeply in that world beyond the murmur of syllables and sounds and the world of names. They rode together along Oak Creek, where he said he experienced the "Peace that surpasses all understanding."
After a timeless time, they turned back and started up the hill where they had met. As my father went up the hill toward the top. When he looked back, Winnie had stopped. When he called for Winnie to come with him, Winnie said with a quiet, peaceful, and loving smile, Hiya (No), he couldn't go on any further.
As they looked at each other for the last time, there was an unspoken understanding between them that the time was soon coming when they would be together with all thier loved ones, past, present, and future, forever. Then he turned and looked to the top of the hill and woke up.
He told me this was between him and me and not to tell my mother and sister as it would worry them. And I never told them.
Tonight, my father told me, without words, that I could share his experiences, that it might uplift the hearts of our friends and relatives in these dark times. He said to always remember that we would all be back together again. He said, that although we may not be able to see through the physical veils, that all our loved ones who had walked the path before us are closer than our closest veins.
And so it is.....
Shunkmanu He Me Yedo! Chanupa Sapa He Me Yedo!
