Anna's Place: The Things Left Behind

Old saddles, clothes left as though layers of skin had been shed, Koa tables, embroidered Hawaiian quilts, a house inhabited for more than one lifetime. These are the things left behind. Anna's story told through another's voice. She had no babies to hold and to whisper her stories to, no children to remember her tales. Yet she is one of the immortalized, remembered through history because of what she did and gave. Hawaii's Incredible Anna.

In another place I sat there with a digital tape recorder, trying to immortalize my own grandparents. I asked them questions about their childhoods, their own grandparents. Some of the details they did not know, the answers having died with those who went before. "I never thought to ask," my grandpa said. "I was too young and selfish and now it's too late," he added quietly.

My grandpa is giving me his grandmother's wedding wing. An intricate, antique looking white gold band with a single perfect diamond in the middle. A ring over a century old. Something that was left behind. At a time when my friend's are getting gigantic Tiffany rings all shiny and new, I will wear a much smaller stone with perhaps a much larger story.

Anna of Hawaii still lived in the house of her great grandparents. "Who still lives in the house of their great grandparents?" we were asked on the tour. I do not but I will wear my great grandmother's ring. I have a few pictures of her and know little of her except that she was happy in her marriage. I wonder if she would twist the metal circle around her finger unknowingly, as I surely will. I wonder who I will pass such a remnant to. Certainly someone who has yet to be born. What will we leave behind when we leave this world? And who will wonder of the objects?