From the World Headquarters of Big Heads

On my next to last night on Easter Island, I went back to the rim of the Rano Kau volcano with Tito. You think I’m making this up? Last week I was on assignment for Conde Nast Traveller magazine, on what is literally the most remote island on earth, over 2000 miles off the coast of Chile.
I’d spent the week tracking down the story, racing around Easter Island, more properly known by its true name, Rapa Nui. Now, as I prepared to take my leave, I wanted to come back to this sacred place for reasons of my own.
As Tito set off to view the petroglyphs with a couple named Tom and Joan from Denver, I sat down and looked at the Oceano Pacifico, taking a moment just to stay still. “Is a good place,” Tito had said to me. “To talk to your ancestors.”
So I set about doing just that. I lay back in the long grass, feeling the tropical sun on my face, and thought about the road that had led me here.
Suddenly, I felt a stab of pain in my back. Whatever this was, it burned like fire. I’d been told there were scorpions on the island, but I until now I hadn’t thought they’d view me as an adversary. Anyway, everyone said the scorpions were no big deal—they were only “little ones.” A bigger threat, supposedly, were the black widow spiders.
Tito heard me cry out, and he came back and checked me out. “Bee sting,” he announced, and a moment later removed a stinger from my neck. “You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said, and Tito headed on to Orongo with the Coloradoans.
As I sat there, I thought about my father, who had been massively allergic to bees, after once running over a yellowjackets nest with the riding mower, and with a sudden thunderclap it struck me: my father had died twenty years ago this very day, on Easter Sunday. In all the exploring of ruins and moai and the traveling halfway around the world, the anniversary had managed to slip my mind.
So I closed my eyes and thought about my father, who had died of melanoma, and I tried to reach out to him in my heart. And as I lay in the hot tropical sunshine, I suddenly felt his voice speaking to me.
“Jenny,” he said. “Put on some sunscreen!”
Which I did, and I pulled my hat down over my forehead, and I thought about the old man for a while. He was a good man: sweet and kind and funny. Then his spirit told me something else.
Later, when I got back to the van, Tito asked me what I’d been thinking about, and I told him I’d had a conversation with my father, who’d died twenty years ago to the day.
“Yes?” said Tito. “And what did he say to you?”
And at that moment the big fat tears rolled down my face. “He said---“ I began, but I couldn’t finish the sentence, as I began to weep among strangers, on top of a volcano. Tito looked embarrassed. “You no say, you no want to say,” he said, but I pressed onward.
“But I want to say,” I told my guide.
“Okay,” said Tito, “Tell me.”
“He said—he is alive,” I said, and the tears poured down.
Tito nodded. “Is good, if you think is good.”
We all got back in the van. Tom and Joan, who’d looked on horrified as this conversation proceeded, were silent as we drove down from the volcano’s rim, tears still spilling down my face. Finally Joan said, “And what did your father die of, so young, Jenny?”
I sighed. How could I tell them what was in my heart, tell the story in a way that would make sense?
“He died,” I said. “Of a bee sting.”
“Oh, Jenny,” said Joan. “I’m sorry you lost him.”
As we bumped down the road, I also realized another thing. He’d died, in 1986, on Easter Sunday. And where was I now, twenty years later to the day? Easter Island.
“He is not lost,” I said. “But risen.”
Is good, if you think is good.