I flew back home last week. Back to the island of Maui where I’m from. It wasn’t a happy trip. I was back home for my Grandmother’s funeral. She had passed a few weeks earlier. It went unsaid, but there was something very different about her passing.

Maybe it was the fact that my brothers and I no longer live on the island; that the unfathomable expanse of the Pacific Ocean now separates us from our home. Maybe it was the fact that my Grandma was the only thing holding us together.

She was the last of our living grandparents. She was the reason we used to gather on holidays and birthdays and the reason we still made pilgrimages back home nearly every year. When she passed, it was as if a light had been extinguished — the light guiding us safely across the sea.


When I arrived at my parent’s house, where I would be staying that weekend, I found a dusty surfboard of mine tucked away in a cobwebbed corner of their garage. It was a solid block of midnight black, resin-covered foam. I had built it several years back. It was the first and only surfboard I’ve made.

As I looked at it, I couldn’t help but chuckle at how absurd it looked. Its lines weren’t straight. The left rail of the board jutted out a little further than the right, its curvature just a little too round. The nose didn’t sit right either. There was a piece of un-sanded fiberglass peaking out at the tip. The only hint of color on the board came from the singular moon-colored fin that poked out from the bottom. With its graceful arc and smooth texture, the fin felt out of place, as if it were meant for some other board.

Everything about that board wasn’t right. I didn’t even put a logo on it because I was too embarrassed to claim it as my own. One time in the water, a grinning, smoky-haired man on a stand-up paddle board next to me asked “did you make that yourself?” Sheepishly, I nodded yes. “Oh, I can tell” he cackled.

Somehow, though, that board was still in one piece. It was probably because it was 10’ long and about 8” thick in the middle. Really, it was 9’ 11” long — I hadn’t gotten the measurement exactly right. In any case, it was a tank. It was so big and heavy, I had to switch arms every minute or so whenever I would walk down the road with it.

But still, I remembered that it was my board. It was my creation, and I had surfed that thing every single day until I moved away.

For all its imperfections, there was a kind of magic about the way it looked. It didn’t catch the eye or hold anyone’s attention, but every once in a while, when you’d take it out in the golden hour just before sunset, the light would hit the fin just right and the board would shimmer like the moon against the blackness of the sky. Its color was both presence and absence, brilliance in spite of itself.

I remembered there was a kind of quirky charm to the way the board moved. It didn’t cut through the water the way it should. Traditional single-fin longboards are known for the way they glide. They are meant to waltz with the waves, floating and weaving in melodic rhythm with the cresting of the water. They rise and fall in balance with the ocean.

But that isn’t what my board did. Instead, it jitterbugged and wobbled, dancing with a mind of its own. When I moved my feet to the back of the board to bend it in the other direction, it would whip around with gleeful intent, more like a shortboard. When I climbed my toes to the front, it would see-saw left and right, shaking with anticipation. It was like it was alive and having more fun than I was.

Naturally, the board and I were fast friends. She was my confidant, my pal. Neither she nor I judged each other. When I fell off a wave, it was no one’s fault. I was not the perfect surfer nor she the perfect board. We understood. We learned to move in rhythm with each other. Our dance was a nascent experience, a joyful re-learning and re-imagining of what was possible every time we danced together. Each time, I allowed her to teach me what she wanted to that day.

Together, we were music. Melody and harmony. Coffee and cream in the moment of mixture.

Yet, here it was, now dusty and alone in the back of a cluttered garage.

I wondered, how could something once so full of life now look so old?


The first day of the trip, we went over to my Grandma’s house. When we pulled into the driveway, I was flooded with memories and emotions. I remembered that every single time I’d visit my grandma, she was always there, standing outside her front door waving at me. Each visit, we’d sit in the same seats at her dining table, eat the same rice cracker snacks, tell the same stories, and ask the same questions of each other. When I’d wander through her backyard, there was always the same mango tree in the center of the yard, the same sunset orange hibiscus flowers behind the shed, and the same rows of snow-color orchids in the greenhouse.

My brothers and I had spent so many years of our childhood with her at that house. Every summer, we’d spend hours climbing the knotted rope swing that hung on the biggest branch at the very center of the mango tree. Every time it rained, we’d ride our bikes through the puddles of rain water that pooled up at the base of the driveway, laughing gleefully with the same maniacal smiles of rambunctious little boys. And every night, my grandma would make us the same dinner, which always consisted of rice, tofu, saimin, steamed vegetables, or some combination of those staples.

My grandma was an ever-present constant in our lives, and her house was synonymous to us with her memory. Nothing there ever seemed to change. I always thought this was because there was nothing there that needed change.

But somehow, her house didn’t look the same when we arrived last week. The grass was dead. There weren’t any mangos hanging from the tree. Nearly all of the orchids were gone. My grandma wasn’t standing there by the door.

When we entered the house, my uncle was already there cleaning out the house and organizing grandma’s things. The shelves were empty and most of the house was already bare. On the dining room table, there were old pictures and paintings and other things that belonged to grandma. The entire afternoon we went through picture after picture and reminisced about old memories, knowing they were all that was left of her.

It again went unsaid, but there was kind of lingering sadness hanging over us as we looked through the photos. My mom and my uncle had already made the decision to sell the house. It wasn’t really much of a choice. They had been taking care of my grandma for the last three years and paying for her care had eaten up most of their resources. We all knew they had to sell it to pay for the funeral arrangements and burial.

It was a decision that everyone understood. After all, it wasn’t like we had the money to pay for it either. And neither my brothers nor I lived on island anymore. None of us had the means to buy or maintain the house, but still, there was a kind of regret everyone seemed to be carrying.

There had to be something we could do to keep it in the family. Someone would come up with a plan to keep it or would swoop in and pay for everything. We all had a sliver of hope, however slim, that the house would live on in the family.

Yet, in the back of everyone’s mind, we knew that wasn’t the reality. Each one of us knew it was the last time we’d be in that house.

In typically Okinawan fashion, however, my mom and my uncle were reserved about it all. If they were upset about the decision, they didn’t let on.

Later that evening, as we were getting ready to leave, I asked my mom how she felt about it all. She feigned a thin smile and sighed,

“Oh you know, without her things in here, there’s not really much of it left.”

She wasn’t wrong. The 1950s plantation-style house was termite infested and barely standing. The ceiling was literally cracking in the middle and looked like it would cave in at any moment. The plumbing barely worked. The faded paint on the walls was a shade of dirty grey.

There was nothing in the house now that seemed worth saving. Everything I loved about it was gone.

And so, as we stepped out of the house for the final time, the same thought hit me again.

How could something once so full of life now look so old?


I think it’s trite to say that death is simply a part of life. Saying that doesn’t make it any less painful. It doesn’t take away any of the questioning or leave me with a sense that there’s meaning behind any of it.

I guess more to the point, my grandma’s passing leaves me with questions that I simply don’t have answers to.

Why is it that the more meaningful someone or something is to you, the more it hurts when they’re gone? How do you fill the void left by someone’s absence? Do you try to fill the void with something else or simply learn to live without them?

I suppose there’s not really an answer.

My grandma’s passing reminds me that so much has changed for me in the last few years. I’ve moved away from Maui, started an actual career, bought a house, moved in with my partner, and started to build the beginnings of a life away from home. It happened quickly, quicker than I ever imagined possible.

In the midst of all the change, I had always thought that I could put it all back to the way it was. It always felt like I could recover the magic at any point and rebuild life in the way I remembered it if I so chose. I’ve left home before and have always come back. Every time I came back, things at home were always the same.

But things weren’t this time. There was no magic. There wasn’t life there to rebuild. Nothing there was the same as what I remembered. Most of the memories had faded and gathered dust.

All this makes me wonder if I’m really ready to navigate the changes of life. I know that things change whether I like it or not, and both life and time move forward, but I honestly don’t know if I’m ready to fully embrace the movement just yet.

One thing I do know is that maybe it’s time for me to shape a new surfboard.