May 26 – 1/3
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NICK RICCA / SPECIAL TO THE STAR ADVERTISER
Photos of Maui fire victims Maurice “Shadow” Buen, left, and Linda Vaikeli are part of a memorial on Lahaina Bypass Road. The memorial of handmade wooden crosses, flags and slate was erected in the days following the August 8 wildfire.
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NICK RICCA / SPECIAL TO THE STAR ADVERTISER
Hearts of Mercy & Compassion crosses were erected in November between the Lahaina Bypass and Honoapiilani Highway. Visitors are encouraged to write messages of support on the crosses.
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NICK RICCA / SPECIAL TO THE STAR ADVERTISER
A cross monument was erected along the Lahaina Bypass Road for the victims of the August 8 wildfires.
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The birthday card that Kimberly Buen bought for her father, Maurice “Shadow” Buen, is in a closet next to her bed in her home in Palmdale, California.
She never sent it because he died in the devastating Aug. 8 wildfires in Maui — less than a month before his 80th birthday.
Her father’s birthday on September 2 was the first of the “firsts” – the name she has given to the series of new milestones that bring new grief after her father’s sudden death.
After her parents divorced, he returned to his native Hawaii. They had become close after being estranged when he contacted her four years ago, and the message on the birthday card she chose hints at her expectation that they had more time to bond.
Buen said: “It says, ‘Here’s to more journeys. More songs to be sung. More fun to be had – because you’re 80 years young. Congratulations on your 80th birthday.'”
She said she normally would have written a personal note for her father in the card, but it is blank because he was among the missing from Maui when it was time to send it. He was identified on September 12 as one of the victims of the Maui wildfires.
“I was thinking about his birthday before he passed away, and when his birthday came around, I didn’t know what to do,” Buen said. “All these firsts keep happening and they are so hard.”
Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone. Memorial Day on Monday is another “first”, followed by Father’s Day and the 4th of July. In a few months it will be the first anniversary of the fire, which claimed 101 lives. The firestorm also burned nearly 3,000 acres and destroyed or left uninhabitable some 3,900 buildings, most of them homes and many housing multiple families.
The loss of housing has only exacerbated Maui’s shortage of affordable housing, and rents have been rising ever since. In the aftermath, 3,000 families – or 7,796 individual survivors – were initially housed in 40 hotels.
During the legislative session that ended May 3, about $1 billion was allocated for Maui’s recovery, which has already begun as the anniversary of the fire approaches. Other signs of progress include today’s Lahainaluna High School graduation ceremony, a Memorial Day weekend event that West Maui is expected to get behind, given all the fire and post-fire challenges the senior class has endured.
Tough holiday
Still, many people involved in the fires remain restless as they approach Memorial Day, which in Hawaii is seen not only as a day to remember America’s fallen military, but also as a broader day to remember the fallen friends and to commemorate family.
Amanda Pump, president and CEO of Child & Family Service, a family-oriented, full-service nonprofit organization, said in an email, “Memorial Day is a day when we reflect on our losses. It is certain that those who have lost loved ones in Maui, the wildfires will bring to their ohana and reflect on the lives they shared with these friends and family members.
Pump said the CVS team of 35 people regularly goes to Maui to help the community heal. She said CFS’ WorkLife employee assistance program flies to Maui several times a week to get people back to work and improve their well-being. Pump said the Cohen Veterans Network team was on Maui a few days after the fire to locate veterans on the island affected by the fires and provide resources and support.
“We continue to provide support and services to the Army and Air Force National Guard members who have been activated to Maui to assist the community,” she said. “We serve both our civilian and veteran community members.”
Pump said it’s important to recognize that grieving is a normal process that can bring out “shock, anger, deep sadness, disbelief and more.” It can be an incredibly painful experience with an unknown duration.
“Surrounding yourself with your loved ones is important in healing from grief and loss,” she said. Other ways to cope with grief and loss include recognizing your feelings and expressing them with words, drawings, music, or other ways that are comfortable for you; developing a routine; talking about your feelings with someone else; and celebrating the lives of your loved ones. “
That’s happening this Memorial Day weekend on Maui and probably wherever there are people with ties to Maui. The family of fire victim Donna Lynn Gomes, 71, who, according to her obituary in Maui Now, “had a no-nonsense attitude that made her a unique soul,” planned to hold their visitation on May 25.
Several participants from Maui will take part in the Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawai’i-Many Rivers, One Ocean event on Monday, taking place from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Ala Moana Regional Park on Oahu. There will also be lanterns at the ceremony in memory of those confirmed to have died in the Maui fire and those missing.
There are those on Maui who will make a Memorial Day visit to the makeshift memorial of handmade wooden crosses, Hawaiian flags and lei that was erected in the days after the tragedy along Lahaina Bypass Road – the main road to and from Lahaina. It continued to grow in the months that followed, often containing notes of remembrance and fresh slates as mourners stopped along the busy road to pay their respects.
Visitors can also go to the nearby Hearts of Mercy & Compassion crosses, which were erected in November by Lutheran Church Charities of Northbrook, Illinois, in partnership with Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Kahului on Hokiokio Place, between the Lahaina Bypass and Honoapiilani Highway.
The symbolic heart and cross ministry is an outgrowth of the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School, where Greg Zanis of Aurora, Illinois, gained national recognition when he built and delivered what he then called “Crosses for Loss” as memorials to the 13 people. who died in that mass shooting. Zanis made and delivered more than 26,000 crosses before LCC took over his program in January 2020.
Rev. Chris Singer, president and CEO of LCC, said visitors to Maui’s site are encouraged to write messages of support on the crosses. Ultimately, the crosses may be given to relatives, or Singer says communities sometimes decide to keep them together as a memorial.
“To be able to express words of hope and encouragement, words of aloha are such a powerful way for us to respond to such darkness, hurt and pain,” Singer said. “That power of remembrance, which keeps those memories, those blessings and those good things alive in our memories, does more than just looking back; it actually helps bring peace and light into the present. It actually helps us to look ahead in a much clearer way. way.”
Singer said some of the messages left on the Maui crosses are particularly poignant, such as “May your spirit be honored in aloha and light” and “Your spirit will live on in your children and your children’s children.”
He said there are also touching personal messages, such as “I love you mom” and “I love you forever.”
Honoring the memory
In California, Buen said she can’t go to the Maui Crosses for Memorial Day, but she hopes she can make arrangements to do something there to honor her father on Veterans Day.
She said she comes from a family that respected the military, so “we always raise our flag on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veterans Day.” If it weren’t for people employed, we wouldn’t have what we have today.”
Buen said she was proud to learn that her father served in the Hawaii National Guard as a Private First Class (E-3), in addition to the decades he spent working on chartered sport fishing boats. She said her father will be top of mind on Monday — not that he’s ever far from that.
Memories of him are still everywhere. She sees his face in photos posted by Maui visitors to the Lahaina Remembered Group Facebook page. She said they remember the man they knew as “Shadow,” a nickname given to her father in her childhood because he followed his older brothers “like a little shadow.”
“One thing I keep seeing with random people is their memory of how he would say, ‘Shadow knows,’” she said. “My father knew where to catch fish all year round, regardless of the season.”
Buen remembers that her father loved making tourists happy, but he had noticed “that tourists are always in a hurry. He said, ‘Where are you going? You are in a circle. You can’t drive fast; will end up in the ocean. ”
Buen said she’s the one circling.
That’s been the case since she started looking for her father, who had difficulty walking and lived in a low-income senior housing complex, for five weeks after the fire.
“I got a little low and a little crazy. My family said I was making myself sick,” she said.
Buen said her uncle Ernest Buen, her father’s older brother, and a cousin provided cheek swabs on Maui for the purpose of identifying him through their DNA. She said her hopes rose when they were not a match, but the FBI ultimately used her DNA to identify her father’s remains.
“When the FBI came, I asked them two questions: ‘When was he found?’ and ‘Where was he found?'” she said through tears. “This is so hard. They found him on August 9th and I had been looking for him for weeks. He was less than a minute away from his house. He was literally trying to find his way to the ocean.”
She said Maui police and the medical examiner’s office later sent her a box containing a pair of her father’s burned shorts, his sandals, some of his dentures and two rubber bands he used while fishing.
She said her father’s ashes were scattered after a Feb. 3 celebration of life at DT Fleming Beach Park on Maui, but she kept a small amount that she plans to have turned into jewelry.
The box of personal belongings is still on Buen’s porch because she doesn’t have the strength to bring it inside.
She also doesn’t know what to do with the blank birthday card. But Buen said she might write a personal message to her father and mail it on what would have been his 81st birthday.
“I really need some closure,” she said.
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Star-Advertiser reporter Dan Nakaso contributed to this report.
