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In loving memory
George Ching's bond with
History, beauty of cemeteries
his granddaughter continues
even after her death
Bereavement support By Nadine Kam
Star-BulletinEVERY day at 2:30 p.m., George Ching sits down to chat with his granddaughter for a few hours. He talks about his day's accomplishments, people he spoke to, chores left to be done and personal dilemmas. Most of all, he assures her that he loves her.
This is a ritual that began when Carole Ann Kitahara was a child. It has continued even though Kitahara died on Jan. 6, 1999, two days shy of her 20th birthday, due to leukemia.
"Her father left when she was a baby, so she was my baby," Ching said. "I took her to school, swimming, tennis lessons. She and I were like one person."
At Diamond Head Memorial Park, near the Garden of Flowers, he says, "I bring a chair and I sit down here, water her flowers, clean her grave stone and talk to her, just like she's here.
"It's like, what they say, we're two peas in a pod, she and I."
Ching, who will be 84 next month, knows that he may look like a crazy old man to the rest of the world. At one time he was on the other side, observing those who frequented graveyards on days other than expected holidays such as Memorial Day, Ching Ming or anniversaries, and wondering about the bonds that led them there so often, even when society tells them not to dwell on their loss.
"People always say, 'You'll forget about it. Move on with your life,' " Ching said.
In fact, he's not wasting away. He's active in church, has plenty of friends with whom he visits all the new restaurants, and though he's a retired financial planner, he still offers help to those he knows who ask.
His daughter, Jocelyn Kitahara, Carole Ann's mother, says of her dad's frequent visits, "He finds it comforting. (Carole Ann's death) has been hard, just as hard on all of us, but this kind of thing happens to all families. It makes you stronger."
Ching says, "I don't want to forget about her. I think other people have ordinary love. My love for my granddaughter is so deep, it's a soul love. You can never etch it out."
What's more, Ching has found he's not alone in his feelings. Visiting Diamond Head is "all friendly," he says. "I have more friends than I had before."
One new friend is Mary Higa, who sits quietly, working on a ribbon lei around a corner from her husband's crypt.
"Someone else was on that side. I didn't want to bother them," she said.
Paul Joyei Higa passed away six years ago and Mary, who lives four blocks from the cemetery, visits with him every day. His crypt is adorned with a shell necklace they shared and a painted wooden Santa that was a gift.
The couple had been married 19 years when he died of cancer and she's visited every day since.
"Some people say it's putting one foot in the grave, but I come here for peace of mind."
Since suffering a stroke three years ago, her trips also provide some physical therapy.
George Osakoda, bereavement coordinator for Hospice Hawaii, says going to a grave site every day is "a little unusual, but not bad.
"Wasn't it Joe DiMaggio who left a rose for Marilyn Monroe every day until his death?
"Allowing yourself to grieve is important. Many people don't and that prolongs the grief," Osakoda said. "It's better to be open and honest. When people say things to the bereaved like 'You should get on with your life,' they're projecting their own issues."
A person may need counseling instead, if he or she fails to recognize a loved one is dead.
"In support groups we emphasize asking 'when did so-and-so die?' We don't ask 'when did this person leave you?' or 'when did they pass on?' or some euphemism.
"We worry if the intensity of the grief is as bad today as a year ago. The intensity should lessen."
Osakoda said anxiety and fears about death are what make a discussion or display of grief so troubling for people.
He said that in times when people grew up on farms or plantations, death was natural and constant. "Today, in urban settings, we don't see death as much. Parents try to protect their children from it. They often don't allow them to go to funerals.
"A lot of parents who lose a spouse will suppress their grief for years, until their children grow up. There are cases of people who cannot go to the graveyard and I tell them, 'Don't go if you're not ready.' Eventually, they are ready."
Yvette Oishi was able to talk openly with her sister Yolanda Kaneshiro about death.
The two had frequently gone to visit their parents graves at Diamond Head Memorial Park, and one day, Kaneshiro simply told her, "I'm going to teach you how to do the flowers right."
Said Oishi, "My way was to just stick them in the can, rubber band and all, but she said, 'That's not the way I want you to do it. I want you to untie it, snip it, clip the leaves and put them in the water one at a time.'
Kaneshiro knew she was dying of cancer, and since her death five years ago, Oishi has gone to visit her grave daily. "Now when I do her flowers, I say, 'Well Babe, does it look nice? Is it OK?' And I ask my husband what he thinks too."
Oishi's husband often accompanies her on her visits. Their sons, ages 29 and 26, only visit on special occasions.
A sense of compassion brings her to the site. It's the same wish to help others that compels her to reach out to the living as well.
"When my sister was hospitalized, I'd go to visit her and I'd see other patients who never got visits from their so-called loved ones. I would go and talk to them and it was so sad to hear their stories. They felt unloved.
"People have called me an angel in disguise, but I don't think so. I'm no different from anybody else. It's something I do because I don't like to see people hurt."
Now Oishi befriends others she meets at Diamond Head. Many who have vacations planned, have approached her asking her to tend to their loved ones' graves while they are gone, and she's been happy to oblige.
When she took ill recently, she said, "It came back to me. People began calling my house to find out if I was OK."
It was she who taught George Ching how to clean the headstone, which she keeps shiny with baby oil.
Ching never forgets that it was his granddaughter, Carole Ann Kitahara, who brought him countless new friends.
Kitahara had been a freshman at the University of Hawaii, studying botany and biology. In her free time, she worked at Sam Choy's Breakfast, Lunch and Crab, which hosted a fund-raiser in her honor.
She was waiting for a bone marrow transplant when she died. Although two donors were found, she was too ill to have the operation.
Having inherited Ching's practical nature, Kitahara invested in a life insurance policy and mutual funds long before she was stricken with cancer, ensuring that her loved ones would be taken care of.
"She was some girl. She wasn't a run-of-the-mill teen-ager," said Ching. "She was always thinking of other people. It breaks my heart to think that even when she was going downhill, she would ask her boyfriend what would happen to her grandfather."
History, beauty
By Nadine Kam
of cemeteries
documented
Star-BulletinFrom the time we are young, graveyards are perceived as morbid places to avoid at all cost. Older siblings and horror films teach us to imagine hands reaching up to grab us from underground and ghosts lurking around tombstones at midnight. In more than 15 years of researching graveyards, Nanette Napoleon Purnell hasn't considered them morbid at all.
"In fact, they're sort of festive. A lot of people hang out there to celebrate the lives of people who've passed away, not dwell on their deaths."
Purnell didn't grow up with a fascination for graveyards. But during her second year in college, she and three friends went on a backpacking trip around the backside of Maui and found themselves caught in a storm.
Looking for shelter, the found an old church that offered protection on its lee side. It was also the site of a graveyard.
"We debated whether to stay there, but it was the warmest place," Purnell said. "All night we were creeping each other out, telling ghost stories, and in the morning ... we all survived."
It was a Hawaiian graveyard, and Purnell was fascinated as she walked around, looking at the names and dates on the markers.
"I've had an awareness ever since."
Later, in Paris, she visited Jim Morrison's grave at the Pere La Chais cemetery just because it was the thing to do among hostelers. The cemetery turned out to be more fabulous than all the sights of Paris, she said.
"There was all this wonderful sculpture. I wasn't expecting it. There were gargoyles, mausoleums, bodies rising out of the ground, animals."
She came home to study Hawaii's burial grounds, founding the Cemetery Research Project in 1985 to document burials. She is also the author of "O'ahu Cemetery: Burial Ground & Historic Site," published by the O'ahu Cemetery Association. She has been a trustee of the association since 1995.
The information she has gathered from more than 30,000 tombstone inscriptions has been published in the form of cemetery directories available at public libraries statewide.
The information has helped many to find lost relatives.
"I get requests all the time from people who say, 'I know my relatives are buried in this graveyard, but I can't find them,' " Purnell said.
"My favorite story is of a family who believed their grandfather was buried at Kalaupapa, but they had never been there. Through my directory, they were able to find him, and three or four other relatives that were also there, and they ended up taking a trip to Molokai.
"It was a moving experience for them because they had no other documents for their grandfather. The tombstone was the only physical remnant of his existence."
In some cases, however, relatives are unable to find their relatives because not all graves were marked.
"Before World War II, not everybody had tombstones. They may have had a wooden cross which deteriorated, but there are a lot of unmarked graves in Hawaii. That's the saddest thing."
Hospice Hawaii groups meet regularly as follows. Call 924-9255 for information. Bereavement support
6:30 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday monthly at Hospice Hawaii, 860 Iwilei Road.
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