Grief is Absence

In the recent loss that me and my family experienced, my urge is to write. It’s how I process. It’s how I honor. This post is a vulnerable, unedited piece of writing, but I hope it provides you some comfort as it has me.

My Papa Abe passed early this morning and though I’ve had a few days to sit with this inevitability, it’s still raw. Grief, I’ve learned, isn’t just pain, but an absence. It’s in the knowing that from now on there will be no more popping by his house just to tell him a stupid joke. No more late night kanikapila sessions. No more kisses on the cheek at every family gathering.

No more.

So, I’m taken by the sudden compulsion to write down the details of who he was, hoping to capture even the roughest sketch of who he was. Papa Abe was a rascal. As a child, he would walk into the homes of anyone who’d left their doors unlocked and eat whatever he liked out of their fridge. He liked music but was a terrible singer. He sang anyway. He was a fisherman and an uncertified electrician. He loved stupid, dirty jokes. (He and his friends would type them up, print them out, and mail them to each other.) And like my Papa Kula before him, he wasn’t afraid of dying–he was afraid of not living well.

I believe he accomplished that goal.

In the last hours of his life, Papa’s hospital room smelled of pikake and gardenia–gifts brought by his many visitors, the soft melody of “Running Bear” in the background–his favorite song, and it was stuffed with more family members than could fit in the tight space. We spilled out into the hallway. We took up every seat in the waiting room and even then, there wasn’t room. So, we sat on the floor in the hallways, holding hands, legs intertwined. A mess of elbows and snot and messy buns. Tissues were passed around as much as laughter. Everyone had a good story to share.

I’ve tried to explain to people before how Hawaiians deal with death and funerals, and I know it makes many uneasy, but for me it’s a comfort. Why must the dying be treated with solemn silence? Why can they not be celebrated for all they loved? All they lived?

Which is why when we got the news of my Papa’s accident, it was the kahea for our community to come together. And they came.

Waves of friends and family arrived to pay their respects, always with something in hand. Lei, cases of water, hugs, pans of musubi, fruit, tears, and steaming char siu buns. We eat, because there is nothing else to do. We wait and cry and laugh. We are heartbroken, but we will be okay. Together.

Because in that absence having people to hold helps.