In early 2016 I was sitting with three or four relatives around my daughter’s dining table in my hometown of Kailua, Hawaii, “coming down” after a family memorial service.

Across from me, my daughter, Tamara,  elbows resting on the table, chin in her hands, looked me in the eyes. “So, Toad,” she said, using a term of endearment she had coined some 15 years earlier.“What kind of memorial do you want when you kick off?”

I was 74 and the question was not unreasonable. Within a minute I answered. “Let’s have it in your yard.” After all, her yard abuts the beach where I grew up. “Invite friends and family,  hire a Hawaiian trio, read a couple of the best things I ever wrote, serve really good Hawaiian food, and at the end everyone catches a wave for me.”

I imagined the guests, the talks, the songs, the food. I imagined catching a wave. I wanted to be there!

In early 2025 I got serious. I was now 84, but it was still reasonable to think I could attend my own memorial.

My name is Keala-o-Ānuenue, the Path of the Rainbow. I have always loved the windward twilight, especially if a rainbow appears. Tamara calls my reaction to it “sky ecstasy.” As twilight comes before night, my memorial would come before the end of my life. The event would be Aka o Ke Ānuenue, Afterglow of the Rainbow.

A second purpose soon occurred to me,  to thank all the people who have helped me along my Path of The Rainbow. The subtitle would be “A Gathering of Aloha.”

Aka o Ke Ānuenue, Gathering of Aloha was held on Summer Solstice, June 21, 2025, at the home of cousin David Wise and his family, on a hill in Kane’ohe near the spectacular base of the vertical cliffs of O’ahu’s Ko’olau mountains. The next day we gathered again at Tamara’s house, for the last part of the original vision, the beach.

The Aka o Ke Ānuenue program, along with all the speeches and some photos, are is reproduced here for those of you attended and especially for those of you who could not. All together, you number more than 200 and you are listed at the end of the program booklet. To all of you I say Mahalo Nui Loa, the greatest thanks for your friendship, teaching, inspiration, encouragement, help and love along the Path of the Rainbow.