February 6, 2008
Harborside memorial park
Pull off of busy Farrington Highway at the carved wood sign. Drive past the boat-washing station, the ice house, the dive shop. Continue on the curved road as it bisects a few acres of paved parking lot, all the way to the back, past the Harbor Master’s office. The piers are on your right, slender finger piers crowded with boats, large and small, securely tethered while at rest. Straight ahead are the ramps where trailered boats are eased into the water. The parking stalls here are oversized to accomdate the trailer-hauling pickups until their boats haul ashore again. Pull all the way over to the left, where the paving gives way to crumbled gravel. You can park right there without getting in the way of busy boaters and fishermen. You’re nose-in against a coral ledge that sits three or four feet above the elevation of the parking lot. Step carefully up the stony slope and behold …
It looks like a tiny graveyard, right on the edge of the ocean. Breakwaters calm the incoming force of Mother Nature, but the waves pounding the rocky shore still manage to keep it misty and cool. Logic says it can’t be a graveyard, though. There’s no soil, just hard corals pushed up out of the ocean some time in the distant past. No gravediggers shovel can penetrate here. Yet the look and feel says cemetery - the markers, the flowers, fresh or artificial, the leaning crosses.
Some of the markers are professionally carved, like this one set in a circle of concrete that bears the handprints of children or grandchildren, family or friends who surround their loved one.
Others appear to be handmade of concrete poured into forms on site, names and dates lovingly picked out before the concrete set. They serve as fine platforms for offerings and remembrances.
A tiny but meticulous mosaic honors the memory of someone who, like everyone else remembered here, must have loved the ocean.
I don’t know if someone carelessly littered or if a friend came by and and shared a tall, cool one with Whitey. I hope it was the latter. It’s evident that he was loved and is missed.
A glass brick delicately etched with sentiment and our state flower recalls another who has gone away. Maybe she was a boater, or one of the “regulars” that I used to fish with sometimes at night.
I don’t know if this is an “official” memorial park at the Waianae Boat Harbor. Probably not. It doesn’t have that look or feel. I don’t know if ashes are entombed in concrete beneath any of the markers. Maybe so, but I think it more likely that those would have been released into the sea. Did all of these people die at sea, or do their memorials merely recognize their love of our beautiful ocean?
I could see lights up in the Harbor Master’s office and thought about going up to talk story with him. He would know. My curiosity felt crude and intrusive, so I didn’t. The “why’s” don’t really matter. This quiet, peaceful place brings comfort to some who carry on. That’s enough.
Technorati Tags: graveyard, Hawaii, memorials, photos, Waianae Boat Harbor
Posted by skeet @ 9:55 pm • Hawaii, Society & culture
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February 8th, 2008 at 4:01 pm, Laurie Says:
I always love your photo entries! The sky is SO BLUE! Those memory markers are beautiful. I have always enjoyed looking at gravestones and trying to guess what the people were like.
February 8th, 2008 at 7:37 pm, skeet Says:
Laurie, I’m really excited because I’ve recently met one of my online friends IRL and she lives on the island. We’re going to go cemetery-touring together! I really like visiting them, especially the really old ones.