Permanent Memorialization

This means creating a dedicated place for family and friends to connect and remember your loved one.

A Consistent Place of Healing

Once a year our family meets at the cemetery in Kaneohe where our parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties are buried.  We gather around the stones marking their graves and talk story.  We catch up on all that happened in the past year, talking in the presence of our ancestors.  At other times we visit their graves, privately to seek guidance or simply talk and though we can't hold their hands, or kiss and hug them anymore we can sit and touch their stones and we know these touchstones will give us comfort for as long as we need it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
In our modern society, people aren't given enough time to grieve their losses. The pressures of work, even the simple emotional need to ‘be busy,’ often bring the bereaved back into the ‘real’ world far too soon.  Also, many families are choosing to scatter the cremated remains of their loved one in a favorite place; the ocean, or even in the skies above. While that may seem fitting at the time, it means that you do not have a consistent place to connect with the memories of the person you loved so dearly.

Having such permanent place - in a cemetery in Kaneohe, mausoleum in Nu'uanu , or cremation garden in Mililani - that can be visited regularly by family and friends is an essential part of the time following a death. It becomes a focal point of memorialization, and gives everyone a special place to go to remember your loved one, or to commemorate important occasions. It can help to make a birthday or anniversary less painful.

A permanent place to reflect on your loved one becomes a way of connecting to a family's past. Visiting the resting place of grandparents or great-grandparents may provide children with an anchor to their personal history. It is a connection to the past, to love shared. It truly honors the relationship you still have – and will always have – with that person.