The Hawaii Fund

In the middle of last summer Brenda's brother and his family were vacationing in Hawaii and Brenda's Dad asked us if we'd ever been there. Neither Brenda nor I had ever visited the Islands and, in truth, we had never really placed that trip very high on our bucket list. Nonetheless, Brenda's Dad said we should go and even offered to buy plane tickets for us.Of course we thanked him, but refused the generous offer. We told him we didn't want to go there in the summer because Vancouver is so beautiful at that time of year. In truth, we knew his time with us was limited and we wanted to spend as much of it with him as possible.

But he was a very determined man. When he got an idea in his head, there was no changing his mind. Every time we would run an errand for him, clean his apartment or buy groceries, he wanted to give us some money. He accepted our refusals to take the funds, but would quietly slip some cash into an envelope he kept on his bookshelf. He'd tell us, "If you want to go to Hawaii, you have to save. If you put aside just one dollar every day, you'll have $365.00 at the end of the year." This dance went on regularly until he passed away on August 15th.

While we were later cleaning up his apartment we came upon an envelope with Brenda's name and several Chinese characters written on it. Her Dad's Hawaii fund for us. We debated what we should do with it and finally decided we should respect his wishes and would celebrate our 10 year anniversary together in Hawaii. As it turned out, there was enough money in the envelope to buy one ticket and pay the taxes on the other that we picked up with Air Miles. And there was still a little left over for Champagne.

And so on October 18 we flew out of Vancouver en route to Honolulu.

Thanks Daddy, I'm sure it's going to be a great trip.Read more