Journey to Paradise

Lilia approached the end of her life on earth. She had no one remaining to watch her die. Her mother and father had passed on long ago, and her husband had died a few years earlier. Her breaths labored, but she felt no agony in her spirit. She didn't need to worry about her past anymore. She knew unconsciousness was approaching, but she didn't struggle to stay alert. She would relent to death when the time came.

Lilia knew she had made mistakes. She wished she could go back and fix the many wrongs she had committed that affected others' lives. She also wished that she could return to her beloved Kauai one more time before she died, but that was not to be. The doctors told her she might have a few months to live. Doctors always said things like that to give the patient hope. Lilia didn't have to worry about hope because she knew that God had built eternity into the heart of man by giving the man the desire to live forever.

Lilia knew she wasn't going to live forever, not on this earth. She hoped that she would close her eyes and go into a coma, so that when her breathing slowed, she didn't have to worry about the suddenness of life being over. That is the way it was with her father. He didn't suffer, but simply faded away. Lilia was definitely failing, but she thought to herself, "I'm just going to close my eyes and think about my life."

Lilia saw the beautiful palm trees, and heard the swishing of their branches in the gentle trade winds. She pictured her island with its lush tropical flowers, trees, and plants growing almost everywhere. She smelled the fragrant seedpods of the mokihana, the flower of Kauai. She imagined the mokihana strung into a lei necklace with some maile leaves, and felt it sitting gently on her skin. She envisioned the Fern Grotto, up the Wailua River, at the mouth of a lava cave. The ferns and philodendrons glistened in the sunshine after a rainfall. Lilia imagined and smelled the wild ginger and hibiscus.

Lilia revisited the place where the banana plants grew wild alongside the road to Poipu. She sat underneath the enormous majestic coconut palms at the Coco Palms Resort, palms that her grandfather had planted many years before. Lilia sat on the veranda of their family home in Wailua. She had loved living in Wailua's rural, down-to-earth atmosphere. She smelled the sugar cane fields burning after a harvest, sweet, tangy, and smoky in the wind.

After her death, her sister would throw her ashes into the ocean in Wailua Bay at Lilia's request, and then she would be home forever. Lilia was born in paradise, and she would live in Paradise again soon.