(23 February 1922 - 14 September 2008)
Thanks for all your prayers on behalf of me and my family. We have felt the love so deeply in this time of mourning, and know that Grandpa Higa was well loved. I know it's silly, but I thought I should do a little post to memorialize my Grandpa. This little plot of cyberspace is nothing much, and certainly cannot hold a candle to his legacy, but it's one of the few venues in my life where I can take a selfish moment if I want to. So, here are the remarks I gave at his memorial service on Thursday, September 25. (The first prose cited is John Donne's "Meditation." The quote about the second Donne poem comes from "Wit," a movie starring Emma Thompson, which happens to be one of my favorite films of all time.)
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Each of us is a product of the people in our lives: every person we meet changes us to some degree, and we carry this influence with us ever after. We have gathered here today to celebrate a legacy we all share—of a man who has touched our hearts and played a significant role in shaping our lives. Indeed, when our dear ones leave us, as we recognize today, it is natural to feel sorrow. We will feel it untimely, and we will sense the world around us is diminished as the result of the loss. These feelings are nearly inevitable, but with open hearts, we begin to realize that our life here on earth is finite by definition. In a plan that is much larger than each of us as individuals, we see that “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1), and that “life” has a broader definition than a breath or a heartbeat.
I feel blessed to be a part of the ripple of family in Grandpa’s sphere of influence. Family was important to my Grandpa, and I never saw him happier than when he was surrounded by his nearest and dearest. I remember one summer when all of us—Grandma, Grandpa, their daughters and sons-in-law, and all us cousins—gathered for a family reunion in Laie. This gathering meant a lot to Grandpa, who would bring it up at least daily during each of our subsequent visits. You could see in his sparkling eyes and hear in his tender voice as he reminisced about that reunion, even years later, that it meant the world to him to be with his family. When Grandpa passed away, he did so surrounded by his family, those who are present here today in person as well as those in spirit. He was blessed to have loved ones to bid him a temporary farewell from this life, but also to have others welcome him to his new chapter in the life beyond. We can all take comfort in the fact that his deep love for his family and friends is certainly strong enough to transcend this momentary separation.
Imagine the joyous reunion that took place when Grandpa joined his parents and other loved ones gone before him who had touched his life just as he has touched each of ours. Freed from the burden of pain and of other physical limitations, Grandpa is now in a place of peace and respite. He is certainly beaming at least as much now amongst his family and friends as he did with all of us at Laie. While surely he misses us, as we miss him, he can feel the love we send to him and can watch over us and send us his love in return. Love cannot be restrained by distance or separation, even if the separation is across the border of mortality.
Times like this give us pause to reflect upon our existence, and to gain a greater perspective on life and all its forms—from mortality to life everlasting. As we ponder, we realize that this is not the final chapter, but rather a transitory one, which marks not the end of a life, but the beginning of a life everlasting. John Donne emphasizes how temporary it is in one of his Holy Sonnets:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure—then, from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep passed, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.
Through this poem, we see that “[n]othing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting. Life, death, soul, God, past present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semi-colons. Just a comma.” What seems to us in our limited view as an insurmountable hurdle is actually no more than a moment, nothing greater than a breath. Beyond that breath are so many of our dear ones that have gone before us, awaiting the opportunity to be with us once again. We can celebrate the influence of our loved ones as it resonates in our own lives, and we can be assured that they are enjoying life everlasting with so many others who have touched their lives. These bonds extend forever in both directions, and the end of this mortal life is nothing but a comma in the midst of a volume so magnificent that we can find neither end nor beginning.
Put another way by Rossiter Worthington Raymond (1840-1918), we can see that “life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”
