Early Sunday morning. It’s still dark. I’ve already checked email, looked at newspaper headlines. And now, being of a certain age, I’ll take a quick look through the Sunday newspaper’s several pages of obituaries looking for familiar people or family names.

It reminded me of something I posted back a number of years.

I’m reprinting that post below.

I opened another box of family things this week, as I try to slowly reduce the several generations of possessions that I boxed up after the deaths of my parents and my sister on the assumption that I would “deal with them” later.

This time I pulled out what appeared to be an old photo album. It turned out to be filled with newspapers clippings carefully placed on plastic-covered pages. On closer inspection, the clips are mostly from the obituary pages. Carefully cut out, most dated, and sorted into categories.

They led me on a strangely emotional journey past signposts in my mother’s life.

In any case, I open the album. It’s individual pages aren’t secured, and they’ll fall out of the album covers if I’m not careful.

The front page is marked simply, “Ohana.” Family. Unfortunately, not much there, just a single page.

The first clipping, top left, dated August 20, 1972. Mary Kawehiokalani Cockett, 83, of Wailuku. It lists out her surviving children by name, and then adds “43 grandchildren and 44 great-grandchildren.”

I know that she was our link to a number of cousins, including Pat Cockett on Kauai and Dr. Emmett Aluli. I had to dig back into my notes to try to recall how we’re connected. I think that I have it correct. She is a descendant of my great-great-grandmother’s sister. So our common ancestor is Kapehe, my great-great-great grandmother, who lived on Maui.

Next clipping: “Kaawalauole, Miss Edith. Age 36…passed away Jan. 14, 1972 at Waimano Hospital.” Now I’m caught short. I remember my sister talking about the Kaawalauole family, but I have no recollection of how or whether we’re related. So I dug into the copy that I made of the hard drive from my sister’s computer. There I find the answer.

Kaawalauole was a younger brother of my Hawaiian great-great-grandfather, Kahooilimoku. According to Bonnie’s notes, he was born on 11 Mar 1841, and died in 1892 at Niolopa, Jack Lane, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. So that’s our link to the Kaawalauole family.

Also on the same page, dated May 24, 1980: “Noa Tong Aluli, 60…a self-employed contractor, died Thursday at his home.” His wife, Mokihana, was (if I’ve got it right) a daughter of Mary Cockett. And mother of Dr. Emmett Aluli.

Smaller print on this one. “Mundzak, Rachel Toomey, age 59…September 18, 1960.” Now it gets tricky. Rachel’s mother, Florence “Flora” Toomey, was my grandmother’s half-sister. Put another way, our common ancestor was Kina Kahooilimoku, who was Rachel’s grandmother and my great-grandmother.

Then at the bottom of the page. “George McPherson, former regent at UH, noted executive, dies at 67.” It’s a Honolulu Star-Bulletin obit, May 19, 1987. He was one of my mother’s first cousins. His mother, Helen Kahooilimoku (Cathcart) McPherson, was my grandmother’s sister. He was still alive when Meda and I returned to Hawaii for graduate school. He was divorced, living alone, and we enjoyed socializing with him. He was one of that hard-drinking generation that were part of the Democratic Party “revolution.” He was part of the John Burns faction of the party, which accounted for his appointment to the Board of Regents.

There’s one final clipping on this page. It’s the obit of Bernice Lee, sister of Duke Kahanamoku. I don’t think we’re related, but I’ll file that away for later exploration.

Past the ohana page are several marked “Possible ohana,” and then on to “special friends.” Here are dozens of names, a few of which sound somewhat familiar to me. The one’s I recognize are friends from her youth, some family friends, some from her years at Kamehameha Schools or the University of Hawaii. Then there are spouses or parents of her close friends. There are a couple of 1988 obits of note. “Nina H.B. Read, Hawaii’s first Lei Day queen, dies,” reads one headline. The former Nina Bowman had five brothers, Wright, Kent, J. Pierre, Waldo, and Jan. Kent Bowman was a close friend of my mother’s brother, and the two of them were frequent guests at our home when I was a kid. Folks who grew up here will remember Kent Bowman as the creator of “K.K. Kaumanua,” who kept us laughing with his pidgin English comedy.

Also from 1988, Thelma Springer, who’s husband, Pilipo Springer, was a longtime friend of my mom’s. Then another familiar name, Alfred Giugni, father of Henry Giugni, former Senate Sgt. at Arms and longtime aide to Senator Dan Inouye, and grandfather of filmmaker Heather Giugni. I think my grandparents were friends with the Giugni family, and I know there was a period during which my uncle caught a ride daily with the Giugni’s from Waipahu to Iolani School.

These special friends quickly give way to pages of “Friends & neighbors.” I’m surprised to see an obit from 1988 of Charles Tassill. One of his brothers, Renwick “Joe” Tassil, died just last year. I had known Joe Tassil since we both participated in a protest in support of Sonny Kaniho back in the mid-1970s. Joe later became a fixture at the State Capitol, where he led tours for a number of years. There’s another obit of Leland Blackfield, whose family lived just down the block when I was in elementary and high school. He died in 1989 at age 45.

My eyes are getting fuzzy from the fine print. More pages follow, “Descendants of early settlers,” and “Alii descendants.” I’m tired, and now I’m just checking the headlines on the obits.

Okay. Pau for now.

I think that as my mother aged, more and more of the people she knew showed up in the obituaries, and she just couldn’t keep up with the sorting and organizing. Those clips just went into a pile to be organized when she had time. She died a few months before her 99th birthday, but never found the time.

I recall that as I was clearing out my mom’s stash, there were at least a couple of small boxes of unsorted obituaries from local newspapers. Apparently those were waiting to be organized and put into place in this album. Now I feel a little guilty about my decision to just trash them when I was stressed and under time pressure to empty the house and get her “affairs” in order.

I do recall her lament in her last years. “All my friends are gone,” she would say. She was matter-of-fact about it, but clearly it pained her.