Wedding Licenses and Other Family Myths

Normally this post would be the subject of another blog I'm writing about kupuna and "our" adventures in technology--which started with trying to gather all the documents we would some day need such as birth certificates, my father's discharge papers and wedding licenses and what media/technology would be/could be used to make sure that whoever was left knew what to do and why and where.

Vital Statistics, one of the busier branches of the Hawai'i State Department of Health, (even before furloughs)is the keeper of many documents a family with kupuna in Hawai'i will need to gather BEFORE their kupuna needs a burial service.

Because my mom wants her final resting place to be with our Dad at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) I needed to make sure that she was still eligible for burial there after her divorce from her second husband.

The friendly, efficient man who answered the phone sounded like he was retired military. Which, in my experience with various military health care operations around the world, meant he was being pretty straight forward when he said I would need to make sure that I had my mother's divorce decree from her second husband.

This should have been no problem; but I didn't even have the marriage licenses from either of my mother's marriages to my dad or her second husband. A-hunting I did go to Vital Statistics.

Now, some people would say I was nosy. Some people would tell me to wait until I really needed the documents. All of this assumes that I'm around to do the legwork needed to set up my mother's funeral.

Unfortunately, a good portion of the job I retired from almost two years ago involved working with families dealing with the grief of losing a loved one. The families couldn't find the right papers, didn't know where to look for these papers, had not discussed services, burial and other important issues until it was necessary.

It seemed appropriate that I would gravitate to a job like this after being my grandmother's caregiver in her final years. Anyway--the job taught me to assume a worst case scenario-always.

What if I'm not here to get everything in order? Life is short and unpredictable--and I've found you can only control what you can control--part of that is getting the paperwork in order so if you aren't there, your loved ones can step in and do the work for you. I could ensure that they're not spending all their time sorting through stacks of paper or hunting through online data that will make no sense at all if they're grieving.

I got the marriage licenses--and found that somehow my grandmother's name had changed from the first marriage, where she was Ethel Louise Wong to the second marriage where she became Ethel Frieda Wong. Frieda?

Grandma's marriage license from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace lists her name as Adele Wong. Her birth name is Yuk Lun Wong. Whaat??

There are stories there, I'm sure of it. Is there anyone left who can tell me these stories? Well, there are two, my mom and her sister, Bunny. I hope I can get these documented before one of my kids has to make that trip to Vital Statistics to get my paperwork.

Actually, they won't have to--it's all gathered in one place, in my file cabinet for now with scanned copies on a USB drive. The phone numbers that will be needed are bookmarked on my cellphone--which my youngest can access.

Now comes the not-so-fun part--to get my mother's divorce decree I have to ask her about a divorce that took years to settle, scarred us and made her ex-husband a forbidden topic and a forgotten episode in her life.

But, ironically, she can't rest next to our dad, the one true love of her life, unless she tells me about the one she wants to forget.