dailynewsnblog
The day after my father’s cremation, my sister, step-mother and I stopped to get something to eat at a McDonald’s before the long flight back to the mainland from the island of Kauai.
We’d debated stopping at many places on the way to the airport but none appealed to my step-mother. They were too “native” looking.* Thus, it was Mickey D’s or nothing. She was not happy but back in 2006 the airport on Kauai offered only coffee and donuts. Maybe a pineapple but you get the picture.
At first my step-mother didn’t want to leave the car. She didn’t want a hamburger; she didn’t want fries. She didn’t want anything to drink and she didn’t want to leave my father alone in the car. “Your father didn’t like McDonald’s,” she said. It was a hot, humid day and she’d just spent three days being chauffeured:
- to the beach where he’d died to thank the lifeguards who’d tried to save him
- to the tiny hospital to thank the doctor who declared him dead and whom she hoped had saved the speedo swimsuit he’d died in (don’t ask why – you really don’t want to know)
- to the offices of the island newspaper so she could buy an ad thanking all the people of Kauai she might have forgotten to thank, and finally:
- to the police station to try to expedite the release of his death certificate (they hadn’t even done the autopsy yet). She’d gone bonkers. She needed to eat something other than cookies.
“We’ll bring Dad into the McDonald’s,” I finally said. “He can sit with us.”
“Okay but he’ll insist on paying. That’s just the kind of man he was,” Kathy sniffled, handing me his wallet.
I was exhausted and perhaps a bit hung-over (my sister and I had managed a quick trip to a nearby liquor store) but holding his wallet in my hands it dawned on me that he was gone and all those plastic cards and pieces of paper that were once so necessary were now worthless where he was going, where all of us are going regardless of our immigration status. In the end we are all undocumented aliens.
The funny thing was, the McDonald’s was full of Native Hawaiians who didn’t think that carrying a large urn full of the ashes of a loved one into a fast food joint was at all odd.
