A Father’s Last, Full Measure of Devotion

Some Father’s Day down the road, 21-year-old Michael Galdamez will be healed. He’ll be out of the wheelchair and walking again. His lungs will be back at full capacity. And most important, he’ll be able to think and talk of his father without the pain and other pent-up emotions that are so evident now.

I’m sad to report that it won’t be this Father’s Day, but if it’s much too early for this son to celebrate his father, the rest of us can.

Michael’s father was Jose Galdamez, who died May 7 trying to save his son’s life. The father-son tandem was working at a golf course construction site near Seattle when Michael was pinned by collapsing earth at the bottom of a 14-foot ditch.

Most of us can’t comprehend the force of collapsing dirt, but it pinned Michael, who is a strapping 220-pounder, to his knees. He yelled for help. The project boss and his father jumped in.

Michael remembers that, then another wave of earth smashing his face against the side of the trench wall. A mountain of dirt also pinned his father against a wall, crushing him and killing him instantly. He was 53.

That was only six weeks ago. It’s too early for Michael to be expansive on what his father meant to him, but he agrees to join his mother and me to help shine a light on his father’s bravery on this weekend when we all reflect on what fatherhood means.

So we sit in the cool of a Santa Ana evening, two days before Father’s Day. All seems so peaceful in the backyard of their longtime home on West McFadden that it’s hard to reconcile that with the pain the family feels. Besides Michael, Jose and Yolanda Galdamez had three grown daughters and nine grandchildren.

“I still wait for the phone to ring every single evening,” Yolanda Galdamez says of her husband, “because we talked once or several times a day, everyday, wherever they were.”

Jose and Michael worked for a Wisconsin construction firm that shunted them around the country. From North Carolina to Texas to Ohio to Washington, father and son worked together, roomed together and grew ever closer together.

That’s why Michael can’t let it out yet--can’t scream or ramble on or whatever else he needs to do. Nor has he been able to cry, his mother says.

It’s not for the rest of us to say what he should or shouldn’t do. When you see your father die trying to save you, when that picture is frozen in your mind, who else can really know how you feel?

Son Still Unable to Cry

“The ground collapsed on me,” he says softly, “and I turned to my left to rush out, but I couldn’t get out. I fell to my knees. I had my wits. I called to my father; I felt the pain in my legs, and he rushed in and the boss rushed in.”

The two dug with their hands but needed more. Jose Galdamez went for a shovel, returned and started digging. That’s when the fatal wave of earth crushed him. Michael didn’t see what happened to his father at that moment but later saw him--his face blue--but thought he was only unconscious.

Workmen digging by hand in the unstable earth needed another three hours to free Michael from the trench. Both legs were fractured. His right ankle had to be repaired. Doctors say his lungs will need a year to heal.

I ask if he has sorted through his feelings. “I just try not to think about it,” he says.

When I ask if the heroic way his father died somehow eases the emotional pain, Michael says, “He’s still not here. What’s the difference?”

He answers respectfully, but there’s an edge. You sense there’s lots of things going on inside his head and heart, but it isn’t obvious exactly what they are.

I ask it of Yolanda: Did her husband’s heroism make his death more bearable? Yes, she says. “But I wouldn’t have expected anything less from him. And if his dad had been down there, Michael would have done exactly the same thing.”

I ask why she was willing to talk about her husband, especially when the story would be pegged to this most difficult of Father’s Days for the family. “Because he was such a wonderful person, OK?” she says. “He was a very loving and giving person and, needless to say, I never get tired of talking about him.”

Yolanda waited a week to tell Michael his father had died. She worries about her son’s psychological well-being.

Not that she is sailing along. It’s just that she has the benefit of years on her son and knows that her husband wouldn’t want her to mourn forever. She will go on, she says, because her husband would want her to.

“What can I say,” she says. “You find that one person. . . . Sure, we fussed like any other married couple, but I fantasized about the day we’d be able to [retire and] do what we wanted. I’d be fussing at him all day long, he’d completely ignore me, then I’d say something really loud and he’d stick his nose out from behind his book and say, ‘Oh, are you talking to me?’ ”

Like others left in tragedy’s wake, the Galdamez family will have to dig deeper than most of us to find joy again. Yolanda knows she has to lead the recovery and be especially attentive to Michael.

“I am very proud of my husband,” she says. “Like I told Michael--because Michael blames himself and there is no blame there--I always told him, I only wish I had a father who loved me as much as your dad loved you.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com