Tonight I drove in to Waikiki to have dinner with a friend. A $30 cabride got us the 10 blocks or so from the Ala Moana Hotel to the Halekulani because the security was so high during APEC (Asian, Pacific Environmental Conference). The dignitaries are scattered amongst Waikiki’s finest hotels. Outside the Ala Moana were several SUVs with ‘Indonesian Delegates’ marked on the dashboards. The Russian President was staying at the hotel of a tourist that I helped cross the parking lot. She said that at one point there were 60 secret service men on her floor. The local residents have been asked to stay away from Waikiki during APEC due to the road and sidewalk closures.
The barricades are supposed to start coming down at 11 p.m. on Saturday night and I hope that they do as Lennie’s memorial service is scheduled for Sunday morning at Fort DeRussy park where he had asked me to scatter his ashes over the ocean there. This is the spot where the Bragg exercise class meets every morning, a class that helped him regain his health years ago.
I sat in the lanai restaurant overlooking the ocean with our friend staring out at the blackness of the boat-less water. I am sad, but feel Lennie’s presence all around me when I least expect it. At lunch the other day I was bemoaning the fact that I could not read my menu in the dim restaurant when a car pulled up to the front and the sun hit his windshield, causing a beam of light to project right onto the menu. I looked at my friend and smiled and said, “Lennie’s here.” So place after place that I frequent where we have been many times before I ask for an extra place setting and put a little bit of food on a plate for him, wishing he were somehow here again. One of the Vietnamese owners of our favorite restaurant looked at me his eyes tuning red with unshed tears and said, “We do that too.”
Tonight we walked the length of the Waikiki strip as I had done with Lennie the first time I came to Hawai’i. It seemed all different now. There were not the crowded streets that had been there before due to APEC, so the livelyness and vitality were gone.
The night was quiet as I missed my love, but the worst times are the mornings. At night in the still darkness I can pretend that he is still beside me, but come the light of day there is an emptiness in the room and in my heart.
Kathryn