Grandfather's Beach...

I recently had the opportunity to visit Kaua'i where my ancestors lived, loved and died. The last time I was there, decades ago, my father and mother were walking on the beach, and my mother, by then in her 40's, passed a section of the beach and fell to her knees in grief, crying and sobbing uncontrollably. My father, alarmed and bewildered, didn't know what to do, except to try and console her for an intense, but unknown pain. After a while, she was alright. Years later, in reading a newspaper article at the archives, we learned that my grandfather drowned and died on the beach when my mother was only four years old. She was with him when they pulled his dying body from the final embrace of the ocean. She had no memory of his death. So decades later, when she returned to this place, her father's 'uhane, his spirit, gave her one last hug and kiss, there on the beach, forever still his little girl. Something he probably wanted to do on that day he died, a final goodbye, but couldn't. I have only seen my grandfather's handsome face in a solitary aged photograph. When I visit Moloa`a, I feel the black rocks, pohaku, are my kupuna, ancestors, and they stand in silent contemplation of the multi-million dollar mansions spreading along the sacred beach of my grandfather's death...like a prophetic cancer of unstoppable change...