The Place That Time Forgot

Kristin Briones

28 January 2011

RD1

This past Thanksgiving weekend, my boyfriend, his parents, and I traveled to Kauai.  I was excited to hear that the Garden Isle was their favorite destination.  I’ve been there more times than I can count.  I know the island pretty well, so I was intrigued when his father’s girlfriend suggested we take a drive out to south side of the island.  She had also been to Kauai many times and her mother grew up on the island’s sugar cane plantation.  Unbeknown to me, was that our trip was about to take an emotional turn.  [THESIS] I was about to discover that time, distance, and hidden back roads can separate loved ones, leaving them lost and forgotten forever. [THESIS]

Our tiny compact car rattled and bounced as my boyfriend’s father tried to maneuver down the winding red dirt path.  We were in search of the graveyard that his girlfriend’s grandmother used to inhabit before her remains were taken elsewhere. Not many people know about the graveyard.  The plantation workers and their families were buried there.  Many of them were immigrants who didn’t have the means do ship their bodies back home.  The work foreman would just dig a hole and drop them in.  Even in death, the racial divide was still prominent.  The cemetery was separated into different race groups, meaning that each race had their own segregated burial ground.

As she went into detail about her grandmother, I stared out the window.  The road became bumpier and I was starting to believe the sign that we passed a few miles back.  “Enter at Your Own Risk,” was scrawled in large bold red letters on a plank of beaten up lumber.  A thin sheet of red dust covered the window, as we approached the coastline.  A group of local fishermen told us to follow the path, the graveyard was at the end.  We passed a campsite that was ironically set up under a “No Camping” sign. As we drove by, a short Filipino man wrestled with his fishing pole. With a swift yank he was able to reel his catch in.  His tiny wife rushed over and grabbed squirming eel.   

In the distance, the dilapidated sugar mill stood somberly.  The mill and its mysterious past was locked away behind barb wired fences and heaping piles of trash.  We had seen the factory up close half an hour before, but seeing it now, it gave off a daunting feel. As we approached the factory, I could see a small plot of land that looked like a pile of rocks shuffled into cracked lines. When we got closer, however, I saw that these cracked lines were, in fact a ruins of an old graveyard.

We pulled to the side and got out. There were hundreds of dirt-stained gravestones and no visible path to navigate through them.  My boyfriend and his father ventured ahead.  The ocean was crashing against the rocks, that was the only sound to be heard.  The ground was barren.  Dead weeds and a rotting tree were the only evidence of life. On either side of me I could see small obelisks with names engraved on them. I trekked up small hill and began to notice a pattern.  Many of the deteriorating gravestones had been defiled.  The intricately engraved stones had been broken into pieces and some had even been kicked over.  Some had been covered with different colors of spray paint, probably the work of some bored delinquents.  

I also noticed that some of the graves were adorned with small cups, bottles of sake, and vases with flowers painted on them. Gifts to respect the dead and their families, but sadly, most of them had been destroyed or besmirched. Broken glass and clay were everywhere I stepped.  I walked gingerly through the grass with my rubber slippers. inching my way over evidence of the degradation and lawlessness of the place.

As I gazed over the sea of eroded grave markers and smashed trinkets, my eyes began to water.  Before this moment, the idea of not knowing where my loved ones were never even crossed my mind.  Unlike the family’s of these people under my feet, I know where both of my grandfathers are buried.  To think that somewhere out there are family’s who don’t know about this place.  We had taken a beat up road in the middle of nowhere.  This cemetery's not on any map and the only people who know about it either don’t live close by or may be dead.  

Time stands still there.  People that are probably not brought up in conversation anymore are six feet under.  Their names don’t cross the lips of their loved ones anymore.  Time has forgotten them.