In Memoriam
Boog's service was Friday evening. There was so much hustle and bustle leading up to it that I just didn't know what end was up. My dad ended up in the Emergency Room that morning with some weird rash that covered his body. He wasn't allowed to go to the service in the event that he was contagious -- so far, so good on that count -- so I was already off kilter with knowing that he wasn't going to be there. His being in the hospital also set us back seriously behind schedule. My sister had to work so she wasn't around to drive me anywhere, and after only three hours of sleep the night before, I really had no business being behind the wheel of a car. Beggars couldn't be choosers, however, so I convinced her BF to come with me to Office Max to get the photos I'd scanned for the collage the night before printed out. I would've printed it all myself except that my printer decided it wasn't going to do the damn job, and as it turns out, it was much cheaper having them do it for us anyway.
We wound up having my mom drive us instead since she tore into the driveway as we were getting ready to leave. She spent the next several hours either picking up the food that she'd ordered for the service, or getting me and Travis, or getting my dad from the hospital, or taking him to get his meds ... I'm amazed she didn't have herself a nervous breakdown on Friday, truly. Neither of us remembered to eat all day, but for her it was even worse because she's diabetic. She wound up fainting just as the last speeches were being done and one of my aunts caught her in time to direct her into a chair. I didn't know about that part until later, however.
I wound up having to hold the beginning for the service until my sister in law arrived; her plane was late leaving Honolulu, and then once she got there, she refused to come inside. It took two people going out and physically pulling her inside the building before she'd actually sit down. I understand why -- for her, seeing the urn made it too real -- but we needed to begin all the same. I got up and thanked everyone for coming, and then explained that we didn't have a formal program set out. Boog was a simple man, and he didn't like fuss, so instead of it turning into something planned, I wanted it to be somewhat spontaneous. I asked everyone I spoke to beforehand to feel free to come up and say a few words if the spirit moved them, and a bunch of them did. PJ started it all off by reading something she wrote the day he died. This is what she said:
Uncle Boogie always made me laugh. Especially when he did the "Ape man" joke. He was always my jungle gym and Aunty Ipo's sweetheart. When he passed I was happy. He is in a safe place now which brings him no pain. This place is heaven. I know we will always love him and he's probably up there having a good time.
After that, my sister got up and read a letter one of his dearest friends, and someone he'd adopted as his "grown up daughter" had written since she couldn't be there with us. When she was done with Lacy's letter, my sister went on to tell the story of how Boog had been "hers" and how badly she'd flipped out when she discovered that he and I were a couple. She spoke off the top of her head, but by the time she was done, she'd had everyone laugh, cry and nod their head in agreement with her assessment of what kind of man he was.
Several of Boog's former colleagues got up and spoke too, and they had the room in stitches and tears as well. I even learned something about my husband I'd never known, and considering how much the man told me about things -- even when he shouldn't have -- that's saying a lot. It was gratifying to hear how he'd touched other people's lives straight from their mouths rather than his, though, to hear the firsthand accounts of what he'd done or said and the way he'd affected them. It made him come alive for everyone in the room.
When everyone stopped coming up, I decided that it was my turn. I wrote the following an hour and a half before I had to be up there at the Hospice building to set everything up, printed it, and then had it in front of me for reference in the event I couldn't remember all I wanted to say. For the most part, I did a half and half, reading the bits that needed reading, and embellishing others with sidetracked stories. Even so, the gist of what I wanted to impart is here for you to see, if you're so inclined.
Fourteen years ago, there was a Hawaiian man and a Hawaiian girl who were crazy about one another and clueless about how to go about letting the other know. They flirted all the time but even then, both of them were too scared to make the next move. Sometimes I used to wonder if it wasn't for the intervention of liquid courage one night whether Kelii and I would've wound up together, but it was a fleeting thought because we were soul mates from the very start.
We decided to try a relationship on August 13th, 1995. That night, he flew back to O'ahu and thus began a year of hell, living with four islands and an ocean between us, seeing one another maybe once every five or six weeks for a day or two if we were lucky. Because we couldn't be together in person, we were forever writing to one another. It was ridiculous how often we wrote in the beginning.
Last night I found a box roughly fifteen inches long, six inches deep and twelve inches wide. In it was our stash of every letter, card and note we ever wrote to one another (and remembered to keep) and after putting them in chronological order, I discovered that we'd sent one another a letter every other day for two solid months. That's thirty apiece when you think about it, and they weren't short, either. The average letter was at least three pages long, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed, but I think that our correspondence brought us even closer together than the phone calls that we took turns paying for on alternating nights, every night at 9 p.m. on the nose, or at 10 when he had a board meeting. Through those letters, we had time to measure our words before writing them out on paper, and in doing so, we were able to make sure that it was exactly what we wanted to convey.
Communication was vital to our being able to maintain a long-distance relationship, but even so, he decided to move to Hilo. I'd offered to finish my senior year of college at UH Mānoa and he was the one who nixed the idea. I often felt that he'd made such a huge sacrifice in leaving his family, and that I wasn't worthy of that kind of devotion. I really ought to have re-read those early letters a lot sooner because he was telling me all along that he wanted to leave the life that was he felt was predestined for him and to start out on his own.
Kelii was my Boogie, not because of his infamous Big Man dance, or because he used to get a huge kick out of scaring me and being a Boogie Man, but because of an obscure line that showed up in the re-release of the first Star Wars movie. Han Solo had been my hero growing up, so when Jabba the Hutt said, "Han, my boogie," and it translated across the screen to, "Han, my boy," it just stuck. Kelii was my hero now, so "Kelii my boogie," turned into just Boogie and that's who he was to me ever after. Even my friends who met him called him "Boog" because that's how I always referred to him. I think he liked having a different nickname than the one he had from his family at home, too. One was his Hilo name, one was his Nānākuli name, and the two really didn't mix. Just like he was Kelii for some, and Sam for others.
One thing about my Boog -- he was a total teddy bear. He liked to call himself "The Pillow That Hugs Back" because inevitably, I'd end up lying against him. He was just that comforting. I could go to him for anything, any disappointment, any celebration, anything at all and he'd wrap his arms around me so I could lie against him and it was just ... home. He was such a romantic man, too. We had this tradition that started with the very first Christmas we spent together. We bought ourselves one of those Hallmark Keepsake ornaments that said, "Our First Christmas Together," and it showed 1995 on it on the bottom. It was a crystalline looking heart ornament and we proudly put it on the tree, even though we celebrated our Christmas together closer to New Year's that year.
Every Christmas after that, we'd buy another "Our First Christmas" ornament so that we'd always remember how we felt the first time, so that every single time was as good as the first. I have twelve of them now, all still in their boxes, all packed away with care. I didn't buy a thirteenth because we spent that Christmas together at Queen's Hospital, worrying that he'd even make it through the night. And he did. I just hadn't thought about it because I was focused on other matters but I still wish I'd gotten that damned 2007 ornament anyway.
Another thing we did at Christmas time was that we'd give each other a card a day for the twelve days of Christmas. His were always picked out with such care, the messages in them so heartfelt that he always brought me to tears with them. Yeah, we were total saps, but you know what? I loved that about him. He was never afraid to show how he felt. He not only loved openly, but he was free with the words, too. He was a big believer that a person can never hear "I love you," too many times.
I was the luckiest woman on the planet because my husband was a good man. He appealed to me on so many levels. Of course there was the cute factor -- his grin was so infectious you couldn't help but smile back. His sense of humor was great too. He could laugh at himself as much as at anyone else. He could relate to dinners of cold canned corned beef and poi as much as he could to fillet mignon and lobster tail, and in the same way, could shift from talking to the boys at the beach in full Pidgin to completely perfect English the next moment if someone called his phone. He was super intelligent, and I think that was one of the things I was most attracted to. He challenged me all the time, and I miss that about him now.
I miss a lot of things about him, things that I could stand here and tell you about for the next two hours and it still wouldn't do him justice. There's a great big hole in my heart, in my very soul because he's gone. I know he's in a better place, that he gets to go jump into the curl at Sandy's whenever he wants now, that he probably got himself his dream truck up there in heaven, and that he goes fishing with his dad and just sits under a mango tree talking stories with him. I'm sure he checks in on us, too, and that he'll always be our guardian angel, but Boogie Man, it's just not the same. The pillows don't hug back.
I want to leave you with one final thought. We picked the song, In My Life for our wedding dance because it truly describes what we were to the other, and I think that it still applies even now. Most of this is quoted straight from the song.
"There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better, some have gone, and some remain. All these places had their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life I've loved them all."
Boogie ... "But of all these friends and lovers, there is no one to compared to you. Though I know I'll never lose affection for people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about them, but in my life, I love you more."
In my life, I love you most of all.
And finally, if you want to see the handout we gave everyone including the main eulogy: Click here to download the PDF.
We wound up having my mom drive us instead since she tore into the driveway as we were getting ready to leave. She spent the next several hours either picking up the food that she'd ordered for the service, or getting me and Travis, or getting my dad from the hospital, or taking him to get his meds ... I'm amazed she didn't have herself a nervous breakdown on Friday, truly. Neither of us remembered to eat all day, but for her it was even worse because she's diabetic. She wound up fainting just as the last speeches were being done and one of my aunts caught her in time to direct her into a chair. I didn't know about that part until later, however.
I wound up having to hold the beginning for the service until my sister in law arrived; her plane was late leaving Honolulu, and then once she got there, she refused to come inside. It took two people going out and physically pulling her inside the building before she'd actually sit down. I understand why -- for her, seeing the urn made it too real -- but we needed to begin all the same. I got up and thanked everyone for coming, and then explained that we didn't have a formal program set out. Boog was a simple man, and he didn't like fuss, so instead of it turning into something planned, I wanted it to be somewhat spontaneous. I asked everyone I spoke to beforehand to feel free to come up and say a few words if the spirit moved them, and a bunch of them did. PJ started it all off by reading something she wrote the day he died. This is what she said:
Uncle Boogie always made me laugh. Especially when he did the "Ape man" joke. He was always my jungle gym and Aunty Ipo's sweetheart. When he passed I was happy. He is in a safe place now which brings him no pain. This place is heaven. I know we will always love him and he's probably up there having a good time.
After that, my sister got up and read a letter one of his dearest friends, and someone he'd adopted as his "grown up daughter" had written since she couldn't be there with us. When she was done with Lacy's letter, my sister went on to tell the story of how Boog had been "hers" and how badly she'd flipped out when she discovered that he and I were a couple. She spoke off the top of her head, but by the time she was done, she'd had everyone laugh, cry and nod their head in agreement with her assessment of what kind of man he was.
Several of Boog's former colleagues got up and spoke too, and they had the room in stitches and tears as well. I even learned something about my husband I'd never known, and considering how much the man told me about things -- even when he shouldn't have -- that's saying a lot. It was gratifying to hear how he'd touched other people's lives straight from their mouths rather than his, though, to hear the firsthand accounts of what he'd done or said and the way he'd affected them. It made him come alive for everyone in the room.
When everyone stopped coming up, I decided that it was my turn. I wrote the following an hour and a half before I had to be up there at the Hospice building to set everything up, printed it, and then had it in front of me for reference in the event I couldn't remember all I wanted to say. For the most part, I did a half and half, reading the bits that needed reading, and embellishing others with sidetracked stories. Even so, the gist of what I wanted to impart is here for you to see, if you're so inclined.
Fourteen years ago, there was a Hawaiian man and a Hawaiian girl who were crazy about one another and clueless about how to go about letting the other know. They flirted all the time but even then, both of them were too scared to make the next move. Sometimes I used to wonder if it wasn't for the intervention of liquid courage one night whether Kelii and I would've wound up together, but it was a fleeting thought because we were soul mates from the very start.
We decided to try a relationship on August 13th, 1995. That night, he flew back to O'ahu and thus began a year of hell, living with four islands and an ocean between us, seeing one another maybe once every five or six weeks for a day or two if we were lucky. Because we couldn't be together in person, we were forever writing to one another. It was ridiculous how often we wrote in the beginning.
Last night I found a box roughly fifteen inches long, six inches deep and twelve inches wide. In it was our stash of every letter, card and note we ever wrote to one another (and remembered to keep) and after putting them in chronological order, I discovered that we'd sent one another a letter every other day for two solid months. That's thirty apiece when you think about it, and they weren't short, either. The average letter was at least three pages long, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed, but I think that our correspondence brought us even closer together than the phone calls that we took turns paying for on alternating nights, every night at 9 p.m. on the nose, or at 10 when he had a board meeting. Through those letters, we had time to measure our words before writing them out on paper, and in doing so, we were able to make sure that it was exactly what we wanted to convey.
Communication was vital to our being able to maintain a long-distance relationship, but even so, he decided to move to Hilo. I'd offered to finish my senior year of college at UH Mānoa and he was the one who nixed the idea. I often felt that he'd made such a huge sacrifice in leaving his family, and that I wasn't worthy of that kind of devotion. I really ought to have re-read those early letters a lot sooner because he was telling me all along that he wanted to leave the life that was he felt was predestined for him and to start out on his own.
Kelii was my Boogie, not because of his infamous Big Man dance, or because he used to get a huge kick out of scaring me and being a Boogie Man, but because of an obscure line that showed up in the re-release of the first Star Wars movie. Han Solo had been my hero growing up, so when Jabba the Hutt said, "Han, my boogie," and it translated across the screen to, "Han, my boy," it just stuck. Kelii was my hero now, so "Kelii my boogie," turned into just Boogie and that's who he was to me ever after. Even my friends who met him called him "Boog" because that's how I always referred to him. I think he liked having a different nickname than the one he had from his family at home, too. One was his Hilo name, one was his Nānākuli name, and the two really didn't mix. Just like he was Kelii for some, and Sam for others.
One thing about my Boog -- he was a total teddy bear. He liked to call himself "The Pillow That Hugs Back" because inevitably, I'd end up lying against him. He was just that comforting. I could go to him for anything, any disappointment, any celebration, anything at all and he'd wrap his arms around me so I could lie against him and it was just ... home. He was such a romantic man, too. We had this tradition that started with the very first Christmas we spent together. We bought ourselves one of those Hallmark Keepsake ornaments that said, "Our First Christmas Together," and it showed 1995 on it on the bottom. It was a crystalline looking heart ornament and we proudly put it on the tree, even though we celebrated our Christmas together closer to New Year's that year.
Every Christmas after that, we'd buy another "Our First Christmas" ornament so that we'd always remember how we felt the first time, so that every single time was as good as the first. I have twelve of them now, all still in their boxes, all packed away with care. I didn't buy a thirteenth because we spent that Christmas together at Queen's Hospital, worrying that he'd even make it through the night. And he did. I just hadn't thought about it because I was focused on other matters but I still wish I'd gotten that damned 2007 ornament anyway.
Another thing we did at Christmas time was that we'd give each other a card a day for the twelve days of Christmas. His were always picked out with such care, the messages in them so heartfelt that he always brought me to tears with them. Yeah, we were total saps, but you know what? I loved that about him. He was never afraid to show how he felt. He not only loved openly, but he was free with the words, too. He was a big believer that a person can never hear "I love you," too many times.
I was the luckiest woman on the planet because my husband was a good man. He appealed to me on so many levels. Of course there was the cute factor -- his grin was so infectious you couldn't help but smile back. His sense of humor was great too. He could laugh at himself as much as at anyone else. He could relate to dinners of cold canned corned beef and poi as much as he could to fillet mignon and lobster tail, and in the same way, could shift from talking to the boys at the beach in full Pidgin to completely perfect English the next moment if someone called his phone. He was super intelligent, and I think that was one of the things I was most attracted to. He challenged me all the time, and I miss that about him now.
I miss a lot of things about him, things that I could stand here and tell you about for the next two hours and it still wouldn't do him justice. There's a great big hole in my heart, in my very soul because he's gone. I know he's in a better place, that he gets to go jump into the curl at Sandy's whenever he wants now, that he probably got himself his dream truck up there in heaven, and that he goes fishing with his dad and just sits under a mango tree talking stories with him. I'm sure he checks in on us, too, and that he'll always be our guardian angel, but Boogie Man, it's just not the same. The pillows don't hug back.
I want to leave you with one final thought. We picked the song, In My Life for our wedding dance because it truly describes what we were to the other, and I think that it still applies even now. Most of this is quoted straight from the song.
"There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better, some have gone, and some remain. All these places had their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life I've loved them all."
Boogie ... "But of all these friends and lovers, there is no one to compared to you. Though I know I'll never lose affection for people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about them, but in my life, I love you more."
In my life, I love you most of all.
And finally, if you want to see the handout we gave everyone including the main eulogy: Click here to download the PDF.