Just a second or two after I dropped my mother’s remains into the ocean a few yards from the Diamond Head buoy, my camera (wielded by cousin Mac) caught the scene.

Look closely, and you will see the green glow in the water visible just above my right hand in the lower right hand corner of the photo. That’s the filtered sunlight hitting the ti leaf container, or pu’olo, which carried her ashes. It quickly sank from view.

You can click on the photo to see a larger version.

A second pu’olo, carrying my sister, Bonnie, followed a minute later.

There were almost no tears shed, the sharp pain of these losses muted by time, leaving just a deep background ache or, at times, an negative awareness, an vague absence that resonates from some inner depths.

As that last green glow disappeared into the Pacific, I was left with a question that continues to puzzle me.

My mother and Bonnie each chose this spot. At some level, it made sense. My uncle–my mother’s younger brother–was scattered in the same spot after his death in 1994. And the ashes of Bonnie’s husband, Ray Stevens, were added in 2007. My dad’s boat took us out to the buoy each of these occasions.

But here’s the thing. My mother and, more recently, Bonnie, were master genealogists. They were intent and deeply immersed in their genealogical research, a passionate, consuming search. Each of them spent decades and countless often frustrating hours trying to put together the pieces of the mystery of our family’s long roots, and explaining their investigations to anyone who would listen as they progressed. It involved searching for and then piecing together documentation of births and deaths, and of relationships between individuals and their part of the family, a complex who’s who tracing back through generations, mapping where each individual rested in the spreading family tree.

Finding this documentation wasn’t easy. Birth and death certificates are relatively modern bureaucratic inventions, and digging back in time required searching for other forms of “proof”. Sometimes births were recorded in a family bible, documented by the local church, perhaps noted in an area census, recounted in private journals, or retold in oral tradition. Documenting deaths was equally challenging. But they pursued their digging, my mother during the era before computers, and Bonnie after the internet opened up vast stores of documents.

Often they would come to a dead end in their research, and appeal for help from a broader community. I remember my mother placing ads in genealogical magazines seeking information of a particular couple, or family in a particular county at a certain time in history. Later, Bonnie would prowl genealogical websites seeking those in search of parts of the same families. These would often result in clues coming back from distant places.

And it was not uncommon that finding a grave would be cause for celebration, because a grave marker often yielded the date of death, a birth date, a spouse’s name, or a list of children, while surrounding graves might provide other clues to broader family relationships.

So both of these women knew the important role that cemeteries and graves can play as markers for future generations trying the recreate their knowledge of those who have gone before.

For most of her adult life, my mother owned two plots at Nuuanu Memorial Park, near where her parents are buried. We visited there often when I was growing up. We would bring flowers, and she would point to the surrounding grave markers and explain the ties of family and friendship between others buried near my grandparents. I knew, through most of my life, that some day my mother would join her parents and other old family friends in that quiet spot.

So it was a complete surprise when my mom suddenly announced she had sold both plots. This was somewhere after 2008, so she was at least 94 at the time. She never talked about the choice, which came as she was starting the task of settling her affairs, trying to tie up various loose ends. But at that time she had all her faculties, so she knew what she was doing when she made the choice, even if she didn’t bother to explain it.

Was it a sudden decision? Something that percolated for years, a decision made but not previously announced or acted on? Unfortunately, that’s a discussion we never had, and I never pressed.

Truth be told, I like walking through cemeteries. I feel much the same way that I feel in a library. You walk down a row of books, or a row of gravestones, and I feel surrounded by wonderful mysteries. If you had all the time in the world, you could read each book, and research the history of each person, and what stories You would find there. Of course, you and I won’t ever do that. But you might let a book catch your eye, or see a grave that provides previously unknown answers about yourself or your family. Or someone might just get curious. “I wonder,” they might ask, “who was Helen Lind?” Scattering ashes into the sea offers no such opportunity for discovery, I’m afraid.

In one of her genealogical charts, my sister noted a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Come not when I am dead.”

Here’s the first half.

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by.

Bonnie reported: “Helen Lind reported that her father used to quote this poem when talking about his own burial. He said it expressed his feelings about mourning at funerals and at the gravesite.”

I found a partial copy of the poem written out on a scrap of paper, perhaps from memory, in my mother’s handwriting. It appeared to have been written long ago, possibly when my grandfather died in 1950.

Perhaps that’s how my mother felt towards the very end of her long life. Just let the wind sweep and the plover fly. People, keep walking. Nothing going on here.

I don’t know. I wish I did.