Honeymooners at the USS Arizona Memorial

Memorial Day Weekend, 2018

My husband spotted the news about the USS Arizona Memorial first.

We had one of those offbeat mornings over the weekend. I was up half the night reading; Michael got up for the day shortly after I fell asleep. By the time I rejoined him in the land of the living, he was reading the news while I tried to wish some coffee into existence.

“Oh, wow.” He hadn’t lifted his eyes from the screen of his laptop.

I looked over. “What’s up?”

He read aloud the story about the crack that developed the USS Arizona Memorial’s structure, one that reappeared after repairs. Tours, he said, were closed indefinitely.

I hated to hear it.

Visiting Pearl Harbor, 2006

Michael and I toured the USS Arizona Memorial on our second full day of being married. It was December 4, 2006, the week of 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The WWII veterans coming for the week’s commemorations were in their eighties at least. For most of them, this would be the last milestone anniversary they would mark.

The gravity of the Memorial didn’t escape us newlyweds. The names engraved on its wall raised chills in spite of the heat, as did the somber reminders that the sunken ship is today a tomb. I choked up when I learned that some survivors later elected to have their ashes interred with fallen shipmates.

But death and sacrifice were distant concepts for honeymooners in Hawaii. We arrived in paradise starry-eyed, fresh in love, still months away from the first trial we would have to really survive together. All around us, Oahu teemed with beauty, from the Pacific’s bluest blues to rainbows arching the sky to exotic flowers to wildlife well-accustomed to enchanted tourists. The land of the living, appealing to every one of the senses.

But at the USS Arizona Memorial, the oil still bubbling up from the deep, still breaking the water’s surface, quietly brought the abstract within reach. Together on the deck of the USS Arizona Memorial, Michael and I regarded the names, offered silent prayers, and paused in somber gratitude and respect.