My dad died 10 years ago this month. It was the day of the Kiholo Bay earthquakes — a ground shift in many regards.
And just as with my mother, Tutu, who died 15 years ago and whose ashes I have yet to scatter off Waikiki, there is unfinished business with my father.
Harold M. Wilson overcame a hardscrabble upbringing to become an international business executive. There’s no denying he was a bit of scoundrel in certain aspects of his life, but what cannot be disputed is that he was a solid provider. A strong believer in education, his seven children from two marriages all earned college degrees, and he became a substitute public school teacher after retiring to Tucson, Ariz.
An imposing figure at 6-foot-3, Dad was an athletic guy who stayed active throughout his life. (While stationed in Hawaii as a Marine during the war, he played on a semiprofessional basketball team coached by Walter Wong, who went on to lead Saint Louis to several high school championships.) As a retiree, he watched his weight, played golf and tackled projects around the house, which made it all the more shocking when he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He worked hard at rehab and used a scooter to get around, bringing it when he visited us on Maui.
Then he was diagnosed with cancer.
The last time I saw my father alive was in mid-September 2006 on my way to drop off my daughter for her freshman year of college in California. Wracked with pain, he was moved to a hospital shortly after we arrived in Tucson. We spent our too-short stay visiting him there, swapping funny stories about our respective childhoods and watching television. Sometimes we sat for long periods in silence. Gaunt-faced, with wire-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes, he gazed owl-like at my daughter as she passed the time curled up on the window seat reading a book or dozing in the afternoon sun. I remember thinking he must have been absorbing every pixel of her image, committing it to memory.
We spoke on the phone several times after that. I told him I would fly back as soon as I could, waffling because of the expense and worried about taking more time off from work. When I did return four weeks later, it was for his funeral.
Dad had told me he wanted to be buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl. With the rest of the clan so far-flung, he said he felt reasonably confident my family would be staying put in Hawaii, and it brought him comfort knowing someone would visit him. He provided me the documents needed for inurnment but I never pushed it because my stepmother, a lovely woman who took very seriously her marriage vows to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, wasn’t ready to part with his ashes.
As the 10th anniversary of his death approached, I noticed for the first time that the Punchbowl overlook is visible from the street outside the newsroom. I imagined my father at rest there and smiled, knowing he would be close by.
But first, Tutu.
“She Speaks” is a weekly column by women writers of the Honolulu StarAdvertiser. Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@staradvertiser.com.
