COMMENTARY
Confronting the haunting death of Dara Onishi
Editor's note: The untimely death of Dara Rei Onishi on Aug. 9 made a profound impression on O'ahu resident Jeannine Wheeler, who found herself struck with lingering thoughts about the unexpected event. After learning of a distant connection with Onishi, Wheeler submitted this essay.
By Jeannine Wheeler
"All who live must die." This thought struck me like a mantra as I drove through the stricken neighborhood of Dara Rei Onishi, who, as most Hawai'i residents know, was killed earlier this month by a rogue boulder that smashed into her home as she slept.
I do not know the Onishi family, but even before I discovered that my in-laws living on the East Coast were very familiar with this young woman, I was haunted by Dara's tragic death.
"Oh, I was driving by anyway," I told my husband, as I recounted the details of Dara's neighborhood, tucked beneath the rugged Nu'uanu mountainside — although I had known when I left the house that morning that I would find some excuse to make the trip. I had to. I had to absorb the physical realities of the location: the street, the house, the steep lava-rock mountain, the mourning family.
My hope was that something in that scene would negate the tragedy. A smiling neighbor gardening, children riding their bicycles, a girl being picked up by her friends in a convertible, maybe even a burning bush with a flashing neon sign saying, "Have no fear. Live in peace. There was a very good reason why this happened."
Not one of those signs appeared to me. The noontime neighborhood was eerily quiet. The only company I had as I slowly drove through the neighborhood and finally, the street leading to Onishi's home, was myself and my terrifying thoughts about the meaning of life and the unfairness of how death finally may come. The hand that grabs us from the other side will never be judicious, rarely tell us of its plans and always leave its mark on those we leave behind.
As glad as I am to tuck my 9-year-old daughter away every night, I feel joyous with the thought that I will see her sleepy green eyes and long, blond, disheveled hair emerging from her bedroom each morning. This, I'm sure, is how the Onishis must have felt that ordinary evening when their daughter closed her bedroom door for the last time.
Dara was a favorite of my husband's parents, who knew her and her long-term boyfriend Shy very well when they were both students at Yale University. An East Asian Studies student, Dara was a "Morsel," assigned to Morse College, where my father-in-law until recently served as master. The two were frequent visitors at the Master's House on campus, and it was through a sadly written e-mail from Shy that my in-laws were told of her untimely death.
"Dara was one of the most lovely, smart and beautiful students we knew," they told me, heartbroken by what happened 6,000 miles away. "We remember when Mr. and Mrs. Onishi came to her graduation with lei, one for the dean of the college and one for each of us. They were the most beautiful things we'd ever seen. So fresh and fragrant and full of Hawai'i. We'll never forget that gesture. And we'll never forget Dara. She had a great soul and was destined for great things."
Grieving is a normal part of life. We all must do it. Each year, death steals more than 1,600,000 Americans from the five main killers alone: heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke and accidents. But when a five-ton boulder wrenches itself from a mountain, recklessly zigzags on a free fall of terror, and then lands fatefully in the bedroom of a promising young woman, we are left haunted.
Why couldn't the boulder have fallen later this fall when Dara was studying at Columbia Teacher's College, or — mercifully — into no one's home at all, instead coming to rest against a monkeypod tree?
"Whew," we'd all sigh. "That was close. Just amazing! That family must have an angel upstairs." Some thankfulness, much conjecture, and perhaps even some religious conversions, followed by a gradual return to the everyday worries of getting our children to their soccer games on time and paying the proliferating bills in our mailboxes.
I'm afraid that's nearly impossible now. I feel sure that Dara's death will affect me one year from now as profoundly as it does today. Many of us on the island are left questioning our belief, or nonbelief, in the higher power that could let this happen. States one letter to the editor, "There is no God. There is no reason why things happen. They just do." Writes another, "Who are we to question God? If you have faith in God, you must have faith that everything is part of God's plan."
With whomever you agree, my hope is that we will all find some internal method for assuaging our concerns about the tragic death of Dara Rei Onishi, her grieving family and friends, and our own worries about our loved ones.
Nevertheless, death and how we attain it will always remain a haunting mystery. Never more so than now.
