Disbelief turns to pain after wife’s death

Youn-Chen Hu realized something terrible had happened after returning home from work Thursday and finding numerous messages on his answering machine.

One was from the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office, saying they were looking for the husband of Jui-Ching Hu, who was fatally struck by a tour bus Thursday on the mauka side of Ala Moana Center.

Hu, still not knowing what had happened, called his daughter on the mainland and she called Honolulu authorities. Ten minutes later, she called back with the news of her mother’s death.

Hu was in disbelief.

“I immediately feel that emptiness, very sad and lost,” Hu recalled on Saturday. “Other people will not know that kind of feeling unless it happens on you.”

Hu’s wife was hit by a Travel Plaza Transportation bus behind the Ala Moana Hotel at Kona and Mahukona streets. It was his wife’s 65th birthday.

Police said the driver was turning left from Kona Street onto Mahukona Street when he struck Hu, who was in a crosswalk, at about 8:20 a.m. The intersection has no stop sign or traffic light for drivers heading from Kona onto Mahukona.

Hu felt overwhelmed by sadness Thursday but couldn’t shed any tears.

On Friday in their Waikiki condo, Hu noticed a photo he hadn’t seen for years that his wife had placed on a bookshelf in their living room — possibly the day she died. The photo was a family portrait — the couple with their first daughter, still a toddler, and Hu’s now deceased father.

Hu finally wept.

“Jenny, you really give me a hard time,” he said Saturday about the picture, referring to his wife by her nickname. “I really can feel the pain.”

Hu said he tried to talk with his wife — in spirit — after seeing the picture.

“I really don’t (know) … totally lost,” he said. “The feeling you don’t know the future.”

Police said Hu died at the scene. The driver, on his way to pick up passengers in Waikiki, didn’t know he had hit someone until he was flagged down, police said. His employer said he has been working for the company since 2011 and had no prior incidents.

Hu said he and his wife met when she was in high school in Taiwan. The two emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, first living in Los Angeles, where they married in 1983, and later moving to Honolulu in 1986.

Hu said his wife enjoyed exercise and cooking and took care of the household, while he earned the income, working as a custodian at an elementary school.

Their youngest child recently graduated from college on the mainland, and the couple was looking forward to a new phase in life together with fewer financial concerns, Hu said.

He said his wife was “sweet,” had many friends, and often said: “Only (moving) a hand can help a person, so why not?”

Jui-Ching, who previously worked in a restaurant kitchen, was probably going shopping when she was hit, Hu said.

The day she died, Hu came home and found a fish she had been thawing in the kitchen for dinner. His wife, he said, would have preferred staying home for her birthday and preparing dinner because the couple enjoyed her cooking more than eating in a restaurant.

“I don’t know a way to start,” Hu said about his life ahead.

Along with her husband, Jui-Ching Hu is survived by her two adult daughters, Stella and Serena.

On Saturday, Hu pointed to a feng shui calendar in his home and noted that for Thursday, the calendar said: “Everything is not good. Don’t do anything.”