Mom's Big Island Visit, Day #3

On 12/15 we went to Hilo to visit with Aunty Doris & Uncle Tom. Doris is actually Mom's cousin from the Hilo side of the Takatani family; she is the oldest of the children that Hilo Aunty & Hilo Uncle had that survived childbirth & infancy. Doris is also 1 of the 6 kids that Mom helped Hilo Aunty take care of when she was in high school. Since I was driving, I went via the Kohala Mountain Road. It was rainy & foggy in spots, but when it was not either it was beautiful! (I like it even when it is rainy or foggy but Mom does not appreciate those conditions.)


Several times as we were driving along, Mom would ask whether I knew if we could go to the Papaikou Camp  where here maternal grandparents lived. (I was able to find information for her about Halawa Camp where she was raised, so she thought I knew everything!) I suggested that we stop in at the Hawaii Plantation Museum in Papaikou to see if they knew anything; I was pretty sure if anyone would know it would be the curator of the museum. Here is one of the old signs that is in the museum, which is located in the old Onomea Sugar Company Store building.


Wayne, the founder & curator of the museum, knows A LOT about the Hawaii Island plantations & also has a lot of memorabilia from the sugar companies. He grew up on the plantation & most of his family worked on the plantation. The museum is a labor of love for him.

L to R: Glenn (volunteer), Wayne, & Mom.

When Wayne found out that Mom's father worked for the Kohala Sugar Company he brought out one of their annual reports & found Grandpa's name! He's making a copy of the report and sending it to Mom.

Grandpa's name is 4th from the bottom in the column on the right.

He also had a copy of the 1944 Hilo High School annual. We found Mom's senior photo! Guess which one is Mom. (Answer is in the caption.)

Answer: second row, second from left.

Wayne did know the answer to Mom's question about Papaikou Camp. No, you can't get there any more. All the houses have been removed.

After we left the Hawaii Plantation Museum, we went to Alae Cemetery to put flowers at the grave site for the Mayahara side of the family. This is Mom's mother's side of the family. It's a good thing I had gone there with her a couple times in the last few years, the dementia has erased her memory of where it was.


From Alae Cemetery, its just a few minutes to Aunty Doris & Uncle Tom's house on the outskirts of Hilo. We went to lunch with them at the Sunlight Cafe, which is owned by a friend of theirs. Uncle Tom had their tempura shrimp platter, Aunty Doris & Mom had the grilled saba with mandoo, and I had the butterfish misoyaki with mandoo.

L to R: Uncle Tom, Aunty Doris, & Mom.

We went to lunch in separate cars since I needed to go to the HIWEDO office in Hilo to get my health insurance straightened out. In early October I tried to switch my COBRA health insurance to Kaiser since I wasn't really able to get services here. I was told I had to wait for the open enrollent period. So in early December I got on the Kaiser website to get signed up, clicked on the "check if you qualify for financial assistance" button, and found I did! I would get a letter detailing how much. A week later when I got the letter and tried to get on the Kaiser website to sign up and found there was no place to indicate the financial assistance. I found out I needed to go through MedQUEST but their website would not let me in; now I was running out of time, the next day I would be on the Big Island with sporadic internet access and much more supervision needed for Mom. And the deadline is 12/15 for coverage to begin on January 1st. I was able to call Hawaii MedQUEST for help yesterday on 12/14. They were also unable to get in to my file on-line because the information apparently came from the Federal website. The MedQUEST person told me to go to the HIWEDO office in either Kona or Hilo, no appointment needed, to have them help me sort it out. Well, it turns out you do need an appointment, but Lori's appointment was late so she said she would get me started while she waited. Lori kept getting booted out of the MedQUEST phone support line; she had already been on hold for the Federal phone support line for about 45 minutes - wait times were running about 90 minutes. She & her supervisor Shelley were very helpful. To make a long story short, it is possible for me to sign up for KaiserQUEST to use the financial aid that I qualify for, however, Kaiser has used the number of memberships that it has allocated for financial aid for this period. At this point I would only be allowed to join KaiserQUEST if I had been a Kaiser member for a minimum of the previous 6 months. So what I have to do to be assured of getting in at the next open enrollment is to join as a full paying Kaiser member now. Which I did, at the full rate it is still about $100/mo less than COBRA. Since I can get services covered so it is still a better deal than what I was paying for.

By the time I was done with all that it was 5 pm and Mom was anxious to leave because she does not like to drive in the dark. More correctly, she does not like to be a passenger in a car being driven after dark. Not sure why, because she slept most of the way back. Which was good because it was also rainy, which she also does not like. My years of training in western Washington weather served me well. It was 6:30 and dark by the time we reached Waimea. I chose to go via the coast road rather than the mountain road, the rain subsided by Kawaihae and the rest of the drive home was dry. We reached the house by 7 pm.

After dinner I unpacked one of the boxes that I knew had some bedding. I had been rather cold the past 2 nights. I found an afghan that had been crocheted by Kai's paternal grandmother, I was warmer than I had been, but could still use a little more insulation. There are 2 other boxes with potential for blankets.