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Pakalaki Memories: 9

Kirby Wright

We were heading for Diamond Head Memorial Park. I'd visited it once before with my father and Ben. My mother had come too and she waited in the car while we searched for the grave. Granny had died three months before he returned from Harvard. After widening our search, my father had given up and placed his carnations on a stranger's tombstone.

"Show people you love 'em while they're still alive," he'd said on the drive home.

"Death is so final," my mother'd said.

"When will I die?" I'd asked.

"When the cows jump over the moon," my father'd answered.

My father stopped at No Ka Oi Flowers in Kapahulu, where Gramma bought a dozen red torch ginger and a pikake lei. The ginger had long, thick stems with waxy red blossoms. Gramma had purchased the pikake because it had been the flower Granny liked best. She'd always promised herself to send Granny money but there was never anything extra because jobs on Moloka'i were scarce even for men. Gramma was never on good terms with her mother, especially after sneaking out of the house to make love to Wilkins. Still, Granny kept that picture of the Englishman on her wall in the hopes he would return. Although Granny had admired her daughter's fierce independence, she resented her willingness to sacrifice her body to please men.

My father turned down Monsarrat Avenue. He didn't believe in God or life after death. "When you're dead," he said, "you're dead." He never went to Mass with us, even at Easter and Christmas. He drove up an incline skirting the northern side of the volcano. The slopes were fuzzy with bright green brush. We approached the only Dairy Queen in east Honolulu.