Remember

Perhaps fourteen years ago, soon after my first wife died, my stepdaughter Adrian, my mother-in-law Mary, and I decided to keep a promise that we had made to my first wife, Carolyn: that we would go on a vacation to Hawaii. Because I had to work, I took a week's trip to Waikiki; Mary and Adrian took an additional week to Maui a week before me.

Although the sun was bright, my sorrow at the loss of Carolyn was such that I could not see its brightness. For me, it was the year without a summer.

Rather than doing touristy things, I walked from Waikiki (where my hotel was) to Chinatown and to the Anglican and Roman Catholic Cathedrals in Honolulu. The Anglican cathedral was, of course, far more beautiful: a neo-Gothic structure built from large blocks of rose coral.

Amazingly, though, at Waikiki, directly on the hotel row, I found a small, beautiful, traditional Roman Catholic church, where the pastor there gave an intelligent and devout sermon on the saint of the day, Saint Augustine, and where he simply and devoutly said, in English, the Mass of Pope Paul VI. It was one of the few times in many years that I found peace in that Mass.

But there was one thing that Mary, Adrian and I did together which was essential: we went to the Memorial at Pearl Harbor. We saw the documentary films there of the attack (which we had seen many other times, and in far more detail, in television documentaries on the attack). And we went on the cruise boat to the Memorial which had been built above the USS Arizona.

While I was there, I took off the lei, the wreath of island flowers which had been given to me on my arrival at the airport, and I cast it into the waters where all of those brave men had died in behalf of our country. And while I watched the lei drift off towards the shore, I quietly sang and prayed a hymn from the Orthodox Service for the Dead:

With all Thy Holy Saints,
repose, O Lord, Thy faithful servants' souls.
Comfort and free them from suffering and pain,
and may earthly cares fade
to joys of Thy reward of eternal life.

As I continued to watch the lei drift toward shore, I began to listen to our guide as she was speaking: "The Arizona and the other ships here still leak oil to this day. Now, it is said by the people of the island that whenever the souls of the sailors who died here are happy, there is an especially heavy flow of oil." Pause, and then: "You know, I've been a guide here for three years, and I've never seen such a big oil slick on the water here as today."

Remember.