October is, well, a long month, me memory-wise.

Today is the 7th anniversary of my older sister’s death. Bonnie died in her apartment in the Marco Polo condominium in Honolulu after battling cancer for most of the year. I got a call from a hospice nurse while Meda and I were walking on the beach that morning, then spent several hours alone with Bonnie in her apartment waiting for the mortuary crew to finally arrive.

In another ten days, it’s the anniversary of my dad’s passing.

So this is always a time for sorting through family memories, unresolved issues and missed opportunities.

This morning I read this tribute to Bonnie. It was first posted on Facebook the day Bonnie died by the daughter of one of my Lind cousin’s who had died at a relatively young age. Her daughter describes how Bonnie and her husband, Ray, stepped into that crisis and made a world of difference. It’s an image of Bonnie and Ray that I’ll treasure.

On the dark night I became the oldest of my family, I called my mom’s cousin because we had just visited them the week before. We landed at a friend’s house and tried hard to sleep on the saddest night of our lives. Mom’s cousin and her husband drove through the night, knocking on the door of strangers to reassure us that they were there. Through the months that followed Bonnie sent me letters and guided me to adulthood. She encouraged me to go to college and probably was the reason that I had any direction at all during that time. She made blankets for my children and helped to lead me through early motherhood and beyond, she offered advice throughout the years and encouraged my children to call her Auntie Tutu, knowing they needed a Grandmother, but never treading on the memory of my mother. Today she succumbed to cancer. I sit here crying and realizing that due to my fear of loss and pain I never let her in, but she never let me forget that I was not alone. Let people love you, let people know how important they are to you, let them know before it is too late to say anything.

Later this week, we’ll be arriving in Walla Walla, a city in the eastern part of the state of Washington, where we both graduated from Whitman College a lifetime ago.

The city is quite different today than it was back then, at least in one respect.

At that time, the crops grown on the surrounding rich agricultural lands were dominated by wheat and peas.

Today it is a land known for its wine grapes and wine producers. The area brags of hosting more than 100 wineries.

I don’t know if that would have made a difference to us back in our day as students, although I imagine it might have shifted some of my early alcohol consumption from beer to wine.

In any case, I’m preparing with a bit of reading: “Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and Its Shifting Legacy in the American West,” by Cassandra Tate. Downloaded as an ebook from Amazon prior to our departure.

The author dissects the changing historical narrative surrounding Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, who established and early mission, and became historical figures by being killed an attack by local indians.

History changes as it is constantly reshaped by ensuing events and beliefs. What was then commonly referred to as “the Whitman massacre” is now reinterpreted as the “tragedy at Waiilatpu.”

Early in her book, Tate reminds us that “history” in constantly being recreated and rewritten.

“…memory and story and history and fact have a fluid relationship. Heroes rise and fall to the rhythms of what scholars call “the politics of memory.” New facts are revealed, old ones dissected, and stories reshaped (and sometimes forgotten altogether) as political and social conditions change.”

This seems important to keep in mind as we try to assess the past, and the future, of Lahaina and, by extension, the rest of our island state.