The Story of Kaliko – Eulogy by Warren Phillips Kaliko (The bud) of Lehua (metrosideros polymorphia) We come here to celebrate not just to mourn and remember , but to feel the joy of life, for Sandras life was truly a blessing to everyone who knew her. I want to tell you about her and it is not so easy, sailing on this ocean of grief, so if an occasional wave sweeps over me, please excuse the pause I take. . Most of you know that Sandra was born on the island of Oahu and spent her childhood on the Big Island of Hawaii. At birth she was given the Hawaiian name, Kaliko Lehua. Naming is a tradition in Hawaiian culture-her name means the bud of the Lehua. The Lehua is a flowering evergreen tree which is the first plant to grow on the lava flow. Lehua is sacred to the Hawaiian goddess of the volcano,Pele. Kaliko, considered herself to be one of the daughters of Pele, but she was very humble about this. I of course considered Kaliko to be my ”bud” and truest friend. The Hawaiian name was based on perception of who the new born is by the Hawaiians who give the names, it was not genealogical or a family name. Sandra Jean Heley was the family name given by her parents Mike and Jean Heley, who are not able to be here today. Mike and Jean relocated from Oahu to Hilo on the Big Island after world War II. They moved back to Oahu when Kaliko was 12. Kaliko loved Hilo, she told us many stories of her childhood, stories of waterfalls and tidal waves and of lava fountains thousands of feet high, and stories about the wonderful diverse people of the island. She went to the local schools and spoke pidgin with the rest of the island boys and girls. Kaliko was the eldest child in her family, she has a brother Patrick living in Oakland and sister Katheryn living in Seattle. Kalikos maternal grandparents Victor and Valera Gede had relocated to Hawaii from California a few years before Pearl Harbor. Vic was a structural engineer who helped oversee the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. His family witnessed and survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. Vic was the son of German emigrants who left Germany before WWI. So, Kaliko was 25% German just like Im 25% Swede. He and grandaughter Sandra were very close. Vic worked as a civilian for the Navy in Pearl Harbor. He also owned a steel construction company in the islands during the 50s and early 60s. He created the opportunity for me to begin working as an engineer. I am very grateful to him for this and for the help given by Kalikos family to my family when we lived with and near them on Oahu. I first met Kaliko on Christmas day in 1963 when she came to my familys home in Monterey. Janice Hunter, my brother Lawrences soon to be wife brought her there. She was Janices roommate in college and was not going home for the holidays so she came along with Janice. Kaliko danced the hula for us that day. She drew my eyes to her hands with fluid grace, but I could not keep them there for long, the wahine had the moves!- and I had never seen anything like it before- I shall be eternally grateful to Janice. Kaliko and I began our relationship in the spring of 1964. Fifty years ago, at the end of August 1964, I returned from one month spent in Belzoni Mississippi helping register voters during the “Freedom Summer.” Since I was low on cash, I hitchhiked from Dallas Texas to San Jose and arrived at Kalikos apartment there. I was home. We have been nearly constant companions ever since. We were married 2 years later in Berkeley at my brother Lawrence and Janices home. Kaliko and I would sing together,-we were folkies, first. She had a beautiful mezzo voice. Then we became folk rockers, and finally rock musicians. She always wanted to sing with the rock bands. I think this was because her father Mike had a swing band in Hilo, He was known as a clarinet prodigy who played in Benny Goodmans band when he was 14. She did sing back up with the Potters Wheel band in Santa Cruz and later we performed as a duo when we moved to Oahu. But her role was mostly as a “band mother” in the Haight Ashbury days. Kaliko was one of the original flower children when we moved there in the spring of 1966.To her it was completely natural to spread the Aloha, and she always had flowers in her hair or a lei. That was her Hawaiian way. She ran the “Bluehouse” and worked a job to help support the band commune there. We spent the “summer of love” there in 1967. Kaliko was a band mother but real motherhood was not on her list. In her teens, she was told by doctors that she could not have children. Kaliko had a severe medical history that included nearly dying from typhoid fever as a two year old and spending 1 year in a hospital, having polio as a young girl in Hilo and an operation to fuse her spinal scoliosis when she was a teenager. She spent one year in a body cast in the hospital with this. The spinal fusion was done using a cadaver bone from a Hawaiian man. I believe that this made her a true Hawaiian, a person who has Hawaiian blood. There are blood cells in the bone. In 1968 we moved into a 4th floor garret by ourselves,- we could see the riots on Haight street from there. That spring Kaliko fell Ill with an undiagnosed paralysis. She was hospitalized for months, and given no chance to live by the doctors. I was devastated and despondent. But then a miracle happened and she walked out of that hospital and was nursed by our friend Elisabeth Hallet, until she was able to return to me. We then lived with Lawrence,Janice and Carmen in Oakland for a while. In late 1969 the band commune moved from Berkeley to Santa Cruz. During these early years K and I never bothered to use birth control, after all she was infertile. Suddenly, we were blessed again, Kaliko was pregnant. We then moved to Oahu where Brook “Pukalani” our little “window of heaven” was born. We lived on the grounds of the Episcopal Church in Kailua where Brook spent his toddler hood. Kaliko was a wonderful mother. When Brook was seven she started school at the UH and got her degree in Tropical Agriculture. She went to work then for Evergreen Nursery, but after that we had another happy accident (we were never very good at birth control)-Carol Jean. So Kaliko was always busy with plants, animals and children. We started our own green house business in our backyard in Kaneohe, Kaliko exported cuttings to the mainland. Her favorite animal was “bozo” a half chihuahua terrier that we had for thirteen years. Kaliko also held a job maintaining the salt water aquariums at windward college. She would hand feed the eels, they learned to recognize her and would come swimming to the surface when she was near the tank. She was a very busy and active person in those days. My only problem was that guys kept hitting on her, even proposing marriage. We never wore rings, I guess that was the cause. When grandma Carol bought 2 acres in Puna on the Big Island we always thought we would move there someday. Instead, we came to Oregon and put down roots here in Barton. Kaliko lived here on this property for 30 years, she loved Oregon but Hawai was always in her heart. K and grandpa Mike started a plant import business in Portland they called it Pacific Exotics - at first we stored plants at brother Marks home on 31st avenue. Then Sandra found a greenhouse on Division street. They installed a gas furnace and shipped orchids in by air from Hawaii. Kaliko knew every florist in Portland. She brought the plants in, acclimated them and delivered them with a guarantee. She ran around town in a van full of flowers. She was the first to do this in this area, like all start ups, competition came along with other mishaps. We had to move the greenhouse here and winter came early before we got the heat installed. She decided to close the business down. All the big stores wer soon following her model, and we saw orchids everywhere in Portland. Kalikos children came first in her life. She decided to be a home mom because of their needs. Both Brook and Carol required “special education”. Brook would say “Im so special” in his best Dana Carvey church lady voice. Kaliko home schooled Carol for a year because the local school was inadequate for her needs. Kaliko made sure that both Brook and Carol completed high school despite their dyslexia and Brook completed his AA degree at Clackamas college. Kaliko faced many challenges in life, her personal health issues, raising her children and caring for her aging parents in Hawaii. The most difficult time was dealing with the long mental illness of her son Brook. For fifteen years, starting in 1990, she answered the call. Many hard choices were made, and the stress was unrelenting but Kaliko forged ahead. One year, in our desperate search for help, she flew with Brook to New Haven Connecticut where I had arranged for Brook to be part of a research study at the Yale medical school. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was being evaluated to see if it would stop the voices that schizophrenics hear. They stayed at a Ronald Mcdonald house for 2 weeks while he received the daily treatments. On the weekends Kaliko took him to New York to see the statue of Liberty and the Metropolitan Art Museum. She was just another little old lady in tennis shoes, herding her 350lb schizo son around the city. Brook , of course , loved most of it, especially the restaurants and he struck up conversations with strangers, when he stopped for a smoke ( about every 5 minutes) or needed to bum a cigarette because he was out. There were difficulties but she made sure he completed the treatment. There was no observable positive effect from all this, but Kaliko and I kept working with Brook, every day, until he left us. Kaliko used her energy to the max- mostly to help other people- or take care of her plants and animals. Gardening was her only selfish vice, she enjoyed it too much. But people came first. Almost every year, in the last decade she would travel to Hawaii to take care of her parents, Mike and Jean, usually for 3 months. Then Mike would get a vacation since he provided most of Jeans care. Kaliko would be there for 3 months and never even go to the beach. In some years, I would travel to meet her and we would take a short vacation trip to Hilo to visit the volcano and see grandmas property in Puna. Pele was very active one year and Carol and Kalikoand I drove out to the lava flow at sunset. We had to walk more than 2 miles to reach the flow where we could see the molten lava globules in the dark slowly moving along the edge of the main flow. Towards the ocean, clouds of steam boiled into the air where the flow met water. Kaliko set down her walking stick and lay on her back on top of the hardened lava. We could feel the vibration of the moving lava under our feet. It was some time before Kaliko got up, I was a bit concerned, as little lava clumps were slowly moving all around us. She, however was just blissfully smiling as I helped her to her feet..Kaliko shivered and steadied herself. We placed a bottle of gin near the lava clumps and began our walk back to the car. The moon had not yet risen and in the darkness we lost our way back to the car. As we traveled away from the lava we looked back and saw a flare of fire shooting up from the flow, Pele had taken the gin. We wound are way through broken chunks of Lapa hoe hoe and began to think we would be out here all night. Finally after the moon rose, I took a bearing towards the sea and found the lava gravel road we drove in on. I drove the jeep back along the road and Kaliko and Carol could see the head lights and made their way across the lava field. On our way back we finally hit the 2 -lane black top which follows the coast near the black sand beach. In front of us , in the headlights,we saw white bird sitting on the yellow divider line, its a pueo,( an owl) Kaliko said as it flew when we drove by it. Shortly in about 15 seconds we saw another owl ahead again sitting directly on the yellow stripes. We keep going and another one appears, thats 3, I said we kept on,and owl after owl appeared all sitting directly in the center of the highway , when I counted the 12th owl we had become silent with wonder. Then, a huge white Pueo flew slowly across the beams of our headlights in front of us, the 13th owl. Oh, that Pele. We asked our Hawaiian friends but no one knew what it all meant.. Always there were animals, the dolphins jumped for her in the waves at the beach in Kalalau valley on Kauai. She called the whales and dolphins in Kona with Judith. Once Kaliko came with me on a job in Reading Ca. While I worked she took off on her own to drive around Mt Shasta, the spring snow was still in place, -she told me she drove high on the mountain to one of the deserted parking areas. As she meditated she began to tone, A raven flew down out of the sky and perched right next to her. Not to ask for food, but to join her ceremony. Kaliko loved all living beings, the earth mother was in her. She did not fear her own death, and she could live with and tolerate great pain, but she wanted to keep on living, because of her love for this earth and her love of everyone she knew. This made it hard, when she was told she might die, because she felt there was always a chance she could live on a little more. Kaliko did not want people to know of her medical condition, this was partly due to the CS influence of grandma Carol; she did not want people thinking of her as being sick. She did plan to draft a letter of notification for everyone when she was put into hospice care, but we were so busy with care we never got to it. We plan to return Kaliko to Pele this fall at Kilauea by scattering her ashes in the lava of the volcano. This is as she requested. A memorial garden will be maintained here at Eaden Rd for people to visit in the future. Id like to close with a song that Kaliko wrote for my dog Peppy who died last year. Kaliko use to sing it to Peppy and both of them would dance around. To the tune of this land is your land (W. Guthrie)-Please join in. I am a cow dog I live in Barton I spend a lifetime Barkin and fartin and eatin cowpies and catchin Horseflies Its a doggy paradise One more time! (Repeat as necessary to reach state of mutual bliss)
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 08:01:18 +0000
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