100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2025. #50. Love Letters.

Cleaning the dirt from under my fingernails took a bit of effort as I'd been working in the yard for most of the afternoon.

Particularly, pulling up weeds and a lot of overgrowth on my Ti plants, I used them for a lot of things, mainly for lei. The crown flowers were also overgrown, so those needed to be trimmed, but it was going to be a bit difficult, as kaonaoa also crept all over the branches. I didn't use the new top-of-the-line lawnmower, but instead used the old-school one. I remember pushing one of these around my old house when the grass was getting a bit too tall. Of course, as a young boy, I hated it, but now I look back on that task with fond memories. My reward was always iced, cold homemade lemonade and triangle-shaped musubi with the big red 'ume in the middle. I always made fun of the oji-san who sat on a small stool in his yard, trimming the grass to a fine measure as if it were an art form. All these years later, it turns out it is an art form because I'm now doing it myself. I understand the concept of Bonsai as well, but I'm not about to take that on. Planting the laua'e on the sides of the house will give it good growth since it sits in a reasonable amount of shade. There's enough of a lawn in the back for the dogs to run around, and luckily, they have no interest in uprooting any of the plants. In the far left corner of the yard is a specific space for specific kinds of plants. In the soil beneath these plants, mixed in with the lepo are the remains of all the love letters ever written between the two of us.

I'd have kept them in a shoe box under my bed or on a high shelf in a closet, or perhaps in a safe deposit box, one would think. Instead, I ran them through a paper shredder and mixed them into the mulch and dirt where I planted our favorite plants. The first were the dark green ti leaf plants, the kind we liked to use for lei that we made for each other. The other was the laua'e from Kauai that grew on the cliffs of Makana. As well, I planted Hala not only because of its various uses, but also because the Hinano flower was your favorite. Lapalapa and Olapa grow in the opposite corners of the yard for lei po'o, but this spot in the left corner is yours. I've memorized every love letter between us, and when the time comes that I've reached my dotage, I can then use my trusty iPad, where I've transposed each letter to documents. Those plants, ferns, and trees have grown in such a way that you can practically see the words from our old letters on the bark, or on the petals of the flowers. Truly, in this manner, our love never died, and it lives in your small mala, in the yard where I sit and visit it every day.

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