The first telephone call I made on Thursday morning after getting the news of my sister’s death was to her son, Kimo, in California.
He had already been at work for at least a couple of hours, and I had to leave a message. He left work for the day after getting the news and called back a little later.
“She did this to me,” he said with sort of a low chuckle.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s our anniversary,” Kimo said.
I wasn’t sure what he was saying.
He went on.
“October 13. Sabrina and I were married last year on Maui. It was October 13. It’s our first anniversary.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes!” Kimo replied. “She did it! I think she waited,” laughing now. “She wanted to make sure that I would always remember her every year! And you don’t forget your anniversary.”
***
Friday noon.
We’re in a barren little meeting room at the Nuuanu Memorial Park and Mortuary. We’re waiting to sign the papers necessary for my sister’s cremation to move forward.
My mother’s parents–my grandparents–along with several friends and other relatives are buried next to each other in a corner of the old cemetery just across from the mortuary office.
Then a surprise.
We hadn’t gotten very far before discovering that I’m not authorized to approve the cremation. Her executor or personal representative must do that. Although I’ve been the trustee since her personal trust was created in July, she appointed her son and an old friend as her “personal representatives.” They live in different parts of California, requiring a long-distance approval process with emailed forms that need to be notarized and returned. Until that’s accomplished, what’s left of Bonnie remains on hold. It’s the first legal/bureaucratic hurdle we have to scramble over. I’m sure it won’t be the last.
***
The second surprise wasn’t long in coming. As we were filling out paperwork, the mortuary rep mention a change in policy by the Star-Advertiser.
The state’s largest newspaper and only daily newspaper on Oahu no longer lists surviving family members in its free obituaries. Now if you want the obit to include surviving spouse and children/grandchildren, the family has to buy a “family placed obituary.”
I don’t know what this costs, but I’m confident it’s not inexpensive.
I immediately thought of how this dramatically undermines the newspaper’s value as a source of the information found in traditional obituaries. As an investigative reporter, I’ve probably compiled backgrounds on hundreds of politicians, business people, and others that have been involved in matters I’ve dug into. Obituaries are a standard source which, for example, can help you identify an elected officials siblings and cousins, always sources of potential conflicts to keep track of. And what about future family genealogists? Their explorations just got harder as well.
And, for the record: Bonnie Pauahi Stevens is survived by a brother, Ian Lind, and a sister, Jacqueline Chappel, both of Honolulu; son, James P. Lamont of Manteca, California; daughter, Christina Kemp of Seattle, and seven grandchildren.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It’s a sad, frustrating journey you are on right now for your sister. My sympathies. Regarding the local newspaper policy on obituaries: I don’t think the people in charge there give a damn about local people or how they feel about their loved ones. They will keep an obituary as tiny as possible, so as to squeeze as many as possible in the allotted space. Then they will give over the whole top half of the page to some “well known” person who most of us, even those of us who read a lot, barely know about. And that person can be from anywhere else in the world, but not Hawaii.
It’s interesting how a particular date lives in memory on account of multiple major events on that date in different years. For me, Friday the 13th has never been a problem (although that was when my ex-wife was born, which was the source of many problems!)
But there is a date which has been the occasion of three disasters that have affected me. September 11.
1. 9/11/1992 — Hurricane Iniki slammed Kaua’i and O’ahu. It was just a couple weeks after I had moved permanently to Hawaii, bought a townhouse condo in Kane’ohe, and moved in. Made me wonder whether I should go back to Boston (where, of course, there were never bad-weather events LOL).
2. 9/11/2001 — Islamist terrorists hijacked 4 airplanes, destroyed both towers of the World Trade Center in New York killing 3,000 people, plus a portion of the Pentagon with more deaths, plus a plane whose very brave passengers fought back and crashed the plane in a rural field while it was headed for the Capitol.
3. 9/11/2008 — My mother died after a year of steady decline in assisted living, with me as her only child and holding power of attorney for medical and finances, and the executor of her dwindling estate. Sadness mixed with bureaucratic hassles up the wazoo.
The SA policy you describe is pretty universal in USA at least in my experience.
When my mother died in 2003, I listed myself as well as our two cats, Buttercup and Uncas as her remaining family. The newspaper refused to include our feline family. Boooooo….
I got prices from SA on obituaries, but am not going to look this up for you now. However, I think it is by the square inch. I was writing obituaries for my husband and me and was curious and wanted the information for my son. I was writing ours to save him the effort and for it to say something we would want. Know from parents deaths that coming up with an obituary is really a pain.
What’s also so curious to me is that, today, even though obituaries are perhaps easier to search online, they are also far more fungible. I imagine if a newspaper shuts down, the obituaries simply disappear (since they are behind paywalls and the WayBack Machine can’t see them). So in the days of print, our deaths provided the anthropological evidence to inform future generations about our existence. In the present and future, this information could easily be lost in the blink of an eye, or hacked and modified.
You could post her full obituary, here. I’m sure many would appreciate it. Aloha.