My dad's name was Joe. My dad was honestly your typical Polynesian. He was super funny, super goofy. He had just a heart of gold like all Polynesians do. And he just understood how to build relationships with those around him. He understood how to love his friends and turn them into family. He was always giving, he lived a life of giving in any way that he could. He wasn’t strict with us (my siblings), but he knew how to discipline us. Fa Samoa way was spanking hard, but he disciplined us in a healthy manner. He spanked us because we were being bad, not because he was angry. When we heard, “You’re gonna get it,” we knew our parents meant it and we would stop.
There were times that even my dad would discipline my friends. My friends and I would play summer league baseball. Funny story... I was probably 14 or 15, my older brother was 17. Both of us had tournaments the next morning. My brother and his friend wanted to go hang out with some friends. Dad wanted them home by 1 a.m. I remember I was playing video games and it was 1:15 a.m. My brother wasn’t home yet. My dad would always say, "dem it" when he was really mad. Any time that word was said, we should be scared. Then my brother pulls into the driveway. They walked in and my dad was waiting for them. My dad asked what time it was. 1:23. He yelled, "What did I tell you?" Then my dad gave them the belt, and his friend too! They were juniors in high school. His friend didn’t have parents that really cared about him. It just made me laugh.
My dad was a tough guy. He was a teddy bear until you flipped some switch on him. You don’t want to get into a fight with him. My dad died with a warrant for his arrest. He was friends with people at the Harley store. One day, he walked out and kids were skating around his motorcycle. My dad asked them to move so he could leave, and one of the kids said, “What are you gonna do about it?” So my dad punched the kid and knocked him out. Then got on his bike and drove away. The cops came to our house that night but they couldn’t arrest him because he was a dialysis patient. So he was charged and required to go to anger management counseling, but he never went ( Isaac laughed).
He was very supportive. Very proud of me and my siblings. We all really excelled in lots of different things. My brother was great at baseball and art. My other brother was good at school and baseball. I was good at football and baseball. My sister was a cheerleader and soccer player. He and my mom would always find ways to come to our games and make it to our competitions. That had a major impact on me. I don’t know how they did it, but somehow they made it to all of our games.
My dad was a postal worker after he retired from the navy. It was a small town so everyone knew him. We lived near Silverdale, a really small town. When Kynsey (my wife) and I were moving and selling all our stuff on Facebook, there was a girl from high school that was buying a bunch of my wife's stuff. She remembered she was months behind her payment for the mail so she couldn't receive any of her letters or packages. My dad would get her mail and give it to her for free under the table. He knew her family was going through lots of family trouble and my dad would always keep them in his prayers and ask how they were doing. He really cared.
He was pretty awesome. He was a teddy bear but willing to fight. Especially if anyone from the family was involved. You don’t mess with his family. If I was in any trouble, he would be right behind me throwin' hands with me.
I was in elementary school when he got diabetes. When he was diagnosed, it gradually grew worse and worse. On my mission, he started dialysis because his kidneys were going out. It helps clean out your kidneys. I think it got to a point later on where the medications and his diabetes, the dialysis, all that pilled up caused him to grow weak. Sometimes he would get up lightheaded and he would faint. Since all this was happening, his immune system was compromised and he would get sick easily. He would be in the hospital for weeks at a time and get pneumonia, or it would take a long time for him to recover from falling. This last time he took a spill and hurt his back. So my family took him to the hospital.
I’ll never forget because it really pissed me off. When the nurse came in, my dad was obviously in pain and my mom explained he didn’t feel good and that he was restless and fidgety. The nurse said they already got something for him. She should have talked to him and really figured it out instead of just giving him a cure all pill. She should have tried to understand what he was going through and how she could help instead of just trying to just numb him. From the hospital, they transferred him to an overnight rehabilitation clinic and I think they had him on some heavy painkillers because he was just out of it. He wasn't himself. It was really sad to see honestly.
Kynsey and I went and visited him on a Thursday and I could just see that he wasn’t himself. My mom mentioned that he said he was seeing his dad, who had passed away years earlier. It was hard for us all to see. It was scaring my mom when he kept saying he saw his dad. That doesn’t just happen. That happened that Thursday and I remember I was just sitting at home studying. Kynsey went to sleep and I stayed up studying. That’s when my mom called me saying they found him out of his bed on the ground and he wasn’t responding. They did CPR and were able to bring him back, but he was still unconscious. We ran to the hospital and he was not in good shape. They would lose his pulse and have to perform CPR often with a machine. They had it on his chest and when he started coding, that thing would start pressing on his chest and it was hard for my mom to see and for me to see. It would jolt his whole body. He really didn’t bounce back.
Then we had to start talking about when we should stop, when we should allow his body to stop trying. My sister had been in Seattle and when she got to the hospital, she saw donuts, fruit, and coffee outside our door. When my sister saw that, she freaked out and knew it was bad news. The hospital usually leaves food when they know the patient is dying soon. It was so unexpected because he may have been sick, but he was still healthy. He was still walking around and stuff. It was completely by surprise. We were able to get ahold of as much family as we could to come by to the hospital to give him a hug and a kiss. A handful of friends and family were there. My best friend since 3rd grade came and was in the room when we shut the machines off.
Kynsey has a really good friend who works at a funeral home and he actually did all the arrangements for her dad. He lived just 45 minutes away and he figured everything out for us. It wasn’t some stranger taking my dad’s body, it was someone I knew and trusted.
We spent a lot of time with family after that. The ones who took it hardest were my mom and my sister. My mom couldn't sleep in her room. She slept on the couch and Kynsey and I would stay the night to make sure she didn’t feel alone. My sister, I think, also took it really hard. I still have hard days now and then. It was obviously rough on me, but because I have an understanding of an afterlife, I was able to cope easier because I understand the bigger picture. I’m the only member of my family with religion in my life. My siblings and my mom don’t understand. The gospel makes it much easier on me to look on a brighter side. To have a deeper hope that I will see him. My mom still has a hard time.
Her and my dad were renting a place, after my dad passed away, her lease expired and she still lives with my brother. She doesn’t feel like she has a home. She doesn’t get to be at the last place she lived with my dad. She would be more at ease if she had her own place. I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job making sure my mom isn’t lonely. It kinda worked out really nicely in a way, when my dad died, my wife was pregnant and due month after. A new baby can help ease grief. Then my nephew was born. Then a month ago, my other nephew was born. My brother and his wife gave birth after trying to have children for over 10 years. Then my dad passed away, they found out she was pregnant. We think dad had something to do with that. Also things like me coming to school here. My dad kept trying to convince me to take classes at BYUH. I never saw interest in it, now I’m learning about my culture working at PCC, which was so important to dad. The only regret my dad had was not teaching my siblings and I the Samoan language. Here is one of the few colleges that teaches Samoan language and I get to take the class. Kynsey and I think that dad had his hand in that also. The acceptance process here, I think there’s spiritual guidance.
My dad was always just 1000% supportive. My family was all there for my baptism. I was so terrified to tell my parents I wanted to serve a mission and not only were they ok with it, but they were excited for it. My dad was proud of me to see my faith growing. He was a proud dad, he would tell our family and friends that I was on a mission. He was stoked to see that I was building stronger faith. My parents lived in Makakilo after my mission and I think they wanted me to stay there. Now it call came full circle and I can see that.
BYU Hawaii wasn’t my first choice of school, I was gonna go to Provo. Thinking about it now, I can’t imagine being there. Since his services were in Washington, we didn’t do a whole lot of Samoan funeral things. Oftentimes family members are buried right there on their property, on my grandparents property, both my grandparents and aunt are buried right in front of the house. A lot of my family flew into Washington for his funeral. The high chief from my family’s village in Samoa flew in and sat front row at the services. It was really awesome because Kynsey’s mortician friend had him buried at the military memorial cemetery. There are thousands of graves but the people who work there upkeep it really really well. They did the 21 guns salute. When they performed the flag ceremony and removed it from the casket, my uncle was able to be the one to do it. It was incredible to have a family member fold and present the flag to my mom because he knew my dad and had a strong relationship with him. It was really meaningful for him to be able to do that. That’s what they do for everyone buried at that cemetery. Everyone who initiates the burial, puts a flag on the casket, folds it, kneels down, and present the flag to the spouse. It was really powerful and you could see the hurt in his eyes. What was cool was that when he was presenting the flag, he personalized the standardized words and said, "Kuya Joe" (kuya: tagalog [filipino] for older brother) in his presentation.
Polynesian people are very giving. Before my family flew in, they gathered money from all the family there in our village in Samoa. Any family who flew in, came with money. They gathered together and put this envelope together for my mom. It had thousands of dollars and was a huge help for covering funeral costs that are so expensive. They gave their money so freely. It’s quite often that when we visit that side of the family, we’re given some money.
Last weekend was my dad’s one year. My family in Washington went to a Samoan restaurant and got his favorite food, gathered the huge feast, and took it to the cemetery to eat with him. That’s something I appreciate. Different cultures have different ways of dealing with death. Kynsey wasn’t comfortable coming to the cemetery with us. Typically in American culture, you go to the cemetery and it’s really sad. It’s silent and so remorseful. But it’s so joyful for us to go to the cemetery, to sit and eat food. We eat together and talk story and laugh about who they were. We share funny memories. It's not sad that they’re not there. We know how to celebrate them in ways that aren’t so depressing.
Kynsey and I weren’t able to go to Washington and be with my family for that. But my dad loved the ocean more than Moana. He loved being in the water. He had this understanding of how majestic the ocean can be, how peaceful and dangerous it is. He loved to boogie board. On his last vacation, we all went to Disneyland. While in California, we went to Huntington Beach. My dad had a custom boogie board made and shipped to Hawaii. We did dawn patrol in the morning for him. We wanted to go to his favorite beach. He had 2 favorite beaches on Oahu. Tracks and Queens. That morning some family and I got on our boogie boards and paddled out to put out some leis for him. I got to use my dad’s board and catch a few waves at his favorite beach a year after he died. I told my wife the night before that I just had a feeling that was going to be the closest I would feel to my dad in a while. I don’t know if it was me feeling the way he felt being on the beach with his board, but it felt so nice.
My wife put together a book for me for his one year. It was filled with quotes from all our friends and family about how funny and loving my dad was. Since he passed away, hearing people talk about him, makes me want to live the way that he did. I want to love the way that he loved and care about people the way that he cared. The way people talk about him has set a standard for me and my siblings to live.
I’ll finish with this. My dad would film every football game that my brothers and I played in. After every single game in high school, all the students on the team would go out to Red Robin and eat dinner and have fun. I remember me and my family would go to Sherry’s instead. I would always go with my family instead of my friends. After dinner, we would go home and I would start watching my dad's recordings. Eventually my dad would end up in my room to finish talking about the game with me. We would analyze the game together, talk about what I did good and bad. He would tell me what I could do to improve, he was so encouraging and praiseful.
People think I don’t wanna talk about my dad. I love talking about my dad. I could talk about him forever. I’m making sure I’m remembering him. I love when people ask to hear a story. I don’t mind talking about his death either. I only say that because I know that there is life after this life. People would be more comfortable if they have that understanding. I wish everyone knew him. He was an amazing man.
