7/26/2013

It feels like everything in the world shifted this day. Every single thing.

We are still catching up to the changes. Trying to pull our way out of where we are and start on a path ahead. Still trying to find meaning in those numbers, in the trail of events before and after, in the feelings we have yet to sort through, in what is left behind, in all of it.

We will travel home tomorrow and I don't know what happens after that. I would like to find some time to write down all that has happened over the past few weeks. So much between then and now with community and family coming together and the most intense funeral and memorial I may ever experience.

I'm not sure when that will be. Time feels strange and I can't gauge the days or the hours. Maybe because part of me will always be at 7/26/2013.

In Jeremy's words:
This is Elmer's son Jeremy. I am still in such shock and grief, but am so proud of my father's final act of heroism that I just have to share it with the world.

Yesterday my mom and dad took my nephews to my dad's favorite sturgeon fishing spot on the Snake River, called Buffalo Eddy. While he was preparing the fishing poles, two of my nephews were playing and splashing in the river. A big jet boat zoomed past the beach where they were and the resulting wave from the wake washed the two boys into the swift current of the river. My older nephew tried helping his younger cousin and my dad jumped in to help them. He got a hold on the younger one, freeing the older grandson to swim to shore, which he did. As the river pulled them further and further out, the current started pulling the two under. My dad, submerged by this time, managed to get his grandson's feet on his shoulders and stabilize him by reaching up to hold his waist. Just as his grandson started dipping below the surface, a boat reached them and pulled him in, but by that time, my dad had already perished in the river. His final act of lifting my nephew above the water for those last few moments was what saved his grandson's life but cost him his own.

News coverage:
http://www.boiseweekly.com/CityDesk/archives/2013/07/28/nez-perce-elder-dies-after-saving-grandson-from-drowning
The online memorial:
https://www.facebook.com/ElmerCrowMemorial
Obituary:
http://lmtribune.com/obituaries/article_268f0e5c-0b56-5b5e-935b-c958cbb32b02.html
Funeral and memorial program:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8od1LL8JoelYW1ZU1g5ZkJ2d28/