His ashes were spread on the property, near the back-house where he lived. Years earlier my great aunt died there. Her ashes were spread near the house, too.

The car’s engine was a 255 cubic inches (4.18 L) Windsor V8. It had vinyl bench seats and got 14 miles to the gallon. It once slept five people (very uncomfortably) after a party. Two of those people are also dead, now. And the car, the house, my grandpa’s ashes, that banyan tree my dad planted so we wouldn’t have to see the ugly house across the street, the ugly house across the street, the tide pools, the driveway where I learned to ride a bike and where I broke my wrist falling off my dad’s truck, the piano that I learned to play and then forgot how to play, the palms we transplanted one year when I was home from college, the big pine tree with the permanent Christmas lights that grew higher than the house, my dad’s plants and the old fish ponds and the monkeypod tree and the newspaper box and the “slow kids” sign that we always laughed at—sure they’re slow, but a sign seems mean — and the room where my siblings were born and the plumeria tree and the puakinikini and the graves of Sam, Tootsie, and Stanley — our dogs and cat, respectively — and my old N64 and my old Xbox and my complete history of the civil war and the satellite dish Dad got installed when Mom was in Cuba and couldn’t stop us from getting a satellite dish, and all the other things I remember and all the things I don’t, but know were there; they’re gone, too.

They burned and then their ashes burned as they were covered by lava and everybody who lived there escaped safely so yes they’re fine we’re all fine everything is fine it’s fine it’s just stuff it’s just stuff and we got all the important things out and into storage and that’s what matters everything is fine it’s just stuff and that’s not what’s important what’s important is that everyone’s alive except the people that aren’t but they weren’t anyway and it’s just sad and not okay at all. I’m not okay but I guess that’s okay because nobody’s okay and if I loved the house so much I would have gone back so really this is just attention-seeking behavior and calculated sympathy-seeking and overwrought sentimental garbage so please don’t encourage it but really I just want someone else to know that this place existed and it doesn’t exist any more and I’m allowed to be sad about it because it I’m a person and people are sad sometimes and there’s no right way to do it but there are a lot of wrong ways and I hope this isn’t a wrong way, it’s just the way I’m doing it and I miss reading in the hammock on the porch and I miss the rock in the driveway and the reservoir and the hill I laid on to watch a meteor shower one night in August. I miss the Kapoho graveyard and the lighthouse that are both still there because they get to keep existing but my car doesn’t. It hadn’t run in years and it should have been scrapped. There was grass growing through the floor and it wasn’t even a good car, really, it just had a lot of sentimental value like a house or a sign or a newspaper box or a sunrise or the way sometimes it would rain on one side of the house and be sunny on the other and the rainbow’s colors were so vivid it looked real but it wasn’t, it’s an optical illusion and I loved that house but I didn’t, really.

If I did I would have gone back and said goodbye and maybe checked the trunk of the car because the more I think about it, the more sure I am that I left some stuff in there. It’s just stuff but stuff matters. I love stuff and I miss stuff and it matters when we lose our stuff.

But it’s okay. It’s not okay but it is. It has to be.