Words Coming to the Surface

*Excerpts taken from my journal, Oahu 2007-2008

The waves tumble onto shore faster and more violently than they did this time last year.  Everything looks like it has no control against this wind.  The wind pushes the water, pushes the birds…the tree branches, the clouds, my hair—even my water bottle quivers beside me.  Coral is shoved onto shore and then is yanked back into the water by grabbing waves.  The tide is coming in, and when it leaves again, the shore will be sprinkled with tiny, broken shells.  

It has been exactly one year since I was sitting against this tree, watching the waves come in.  I have been moved by the winds also, unable to object, but just tumbling in and over myself.  When one is pushed like this, change is inevitable.  Last year, I wrote a letter to Ibey and Dad-dad.  This year, the letter still sits in my journal unmoved—and Ibey is gone.  My letter cannot be postmarked and delivered to her.  Sometimes I think I can feel her in the wind and in the rain.  It’s almost as if my thoughts no longer have to be stamped and postmarked to be delivered to her.  It’s like she knows as soon as I think them, but the tears still fall, and the rain still comes.  The ocean looks darker than it should.

*          *          *          *          *

I got to come home for Christmas break, but the night before I was supposed to fly back to Oahu, Ibey was taken to the hospital.  I slept in a cot beside her bed.  I heard the beeping and vaguely remember nurses rushing in to tend to her.  Instead of waking up, I wanted to stay in my dream world.  I was scared…and now I feel so guilty for being unconscious for even one minute of her final hours here.  The doctors had talked to us about hospice care—they said she had a few months left.  I didn’t know yet, but they were wrong.  

    

I’m glad I got to hold her hand.  I rubbed her fingers and then squeezed her palms.  I was so scared.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do for her.  I thought about everything I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know how to bring it up.  I was told not to let on about how bad the tear in her artery was.  I rehearsed what I would say, but she was gone before the words were ready. 
   
    

When morning came, I watched snow fall outside her hospital window, like white cotton balls waltzing with Tennessee wind.  More family arrived and shared stories around her hospital bed.  She was alive with laughter, and we all huddled in to feel that warmth that radiated from the fire of her soul.  We were all children again…scared and sad, happy and confused.  

I planned to go home and shower, and return the following day.  I kissed her on the forehead and said, “I love you.”  As I walked out the door, I turned around to see her smiling face.  “I’ll be back in the morning,” I called and disappeared around the corner.  I had no idea that this would be the last time I would see her alive. 

*          *          *          *          *

I cried and wailed, letting out sounds that I didn’t even know I was capable of making.  My body shook and heaved as all of the love she had planted in my heart burst forth into unformed words because I didn’t know how to say, “Goodbye, Thank you, and I love you” to someone who I’d never see again.  I still trembled at the thought of her leaving.    I wanted to show her that I had learned the lessons she had taught me.  

*          *          *          *          *

I’m sitting outside on the lanai.  It’s cloudy tonight, but little peepholes in the clouds allow me to see a glimpse of the heavens.  An aura of light creates the iris around a bright-eyed full moon—a promise that it won’t get too dark to see.  

The last time I saw her before they wheeled her out of the funeral home, I put a bracelet in her hand.  It said Ku’uipo, which means “sweetheart” in Hawaiian.  It was just some cheap trinket that I had gotten from the swap meet at Aloha Stadium, but I felt like if I gave her that bracelet, it might be easier for her to find me somehow.  Someone up there, I thought, could point her in my direction.   

   

Sometimes, I feel like she is here on this island with me.  Is it a coincidence that every time I think about her, a gust of wind surges through the leaves of palm trees and bends their skinny trunks?  They sway back and forth like hula dancers welcoming her to the island.  

I read a poem to honor her today—“Thanksgiving” by Bob Hicok— and when I did, the rain fell in hard sheets from the sky.  At first, it made me feel like the whole universe was saying, “I feel your pain.” But now, I’m realizing that it’s just the time of the season.  They say it rains a lot in winter.  Last year, it rained for forty days straight.  

Somehow, the earth continues on its journey around the sun.  The flowers are watered by falling rain.  The ocean currents bring the sea turtles to this shore.  A leaf falls to the grass.  An ant carries a crumb.  A man jogs passed.  The world goes on as it should while a few of its inhabitants stop and mourn the loss of one of its brightest stars.