BYTE MARKS
Cemetery connection enlightening
By Burt Lum
Halloween has come and gone, and I now find myself writing about oahucemetery.org. Had I known about the walking tours and particularly about Nanette Napo-leon Purnell, chief information repository for the cemetery, my timing might have been a little better. Nevertheless, here I am recommending both the Web site and the graveyard as must-sees.
Most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about cemeteries. We believe that by not thinking of death, it will go away. My experience with graveyards has been, you go there, do your business and leave. I was always told: never stand on someone's grave, never whistle in the dark and never ever take a stone from a heiau.
Until you meet someone like Nanette, these preconceived notions are what you live by. In order to break out of these limitations, she has taken upon the task of demystifying the graveyard for people.
Her base of operation is the O'ahu Cemetery on Nu'uanu Avenue. I've been there once, for a Japanese Buddhist burial ceremony. I never realized before she started her tour that the cemetery is multi-ethnic and has Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, missionaries, and a section where veterans of the Civil War are buried.
Burial techniques and the tools of the trade are interesting, but what is captivating about the graveyard are the stories and histories of those buried in them.
Without an enthusiastic tour guide like Nanette, only inscriptions on stones might pique anyone's interest. But through the stories she tells, people's lives and Hawai'i's history take on new meaning. For a brief moment, to stand in front of the headstone of Alexander Joy Cartwright, the father of American baseball; or renown botanist Joseph Rock; or Hawaiian historian John Papa Ii; or the internationally acclaimed mythologist Joseph Campbell. You can momentarily connect with these individuals.
You've known or heard about these people, but to be in their presence (in a manner of speaking) and to give recognition to their lives continues their legacy.
We sometimes get so caught up in our own world that momentary reflection of those who came before us is soul-satisfying.
Burt Lum is a click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
