When all of that was done, Chappy lay down on the mattress next to Paa. Oriwia covered him with a blanket, and he went to sleep. Groups of mourners came throughout the afternoon as Chappy slept on.

It was when Oriwia tried to wake him so that he could go for an evening meal that she realised something was wrong. Her husband’s skin was moist and he wouldn’t stir. She loosened his clothing, and Aki helped her shift him to a mattress by the open door, where she attempted to cool him down with dampened cloths. He stirred but didn’t wake.

At midnight he was helped to the car to be taken to hospital. Bird bones, a bird. By morning he could have flown. ‘Hurry,’ Oriwia said.

‘Take care,’ people said.

‘We’ll wait the burial until you come back.’

Aki returned for the interment the following day. Oriwia went to stay at Ti’s house while Chappy remained in hospital for the next six weeks. ‘He’s good at surviving,’ Aki said as he left, and Oriwia took strength from this as pneumonia brought Chappy near to death.

It was during the weeks of Chappy’s illness that Oriwia first asked herself whether Aotearoa was the right place for her husband after all. With the weather the way it was, she now felt she wanted to get him back to Hawai‘i as soon as possible. She decided she would go with him and stay until he had fully recovered.

‘Turn on that machine, Grandson,’ Oriwia said. ‘I’ll just finish what I’m doing. There’s something I want recorded. I want you to play it to Aki. He has to hear this.’

Once my grandmother was settled, and though there were still questions I wanted to ask about the return to Hawai‘i and my grandfather’s citizenship, I turned on the tape recorder. It was the first time she had asked me to do this. I pressed the ‘record’ button.

They called the baby Noelani after Ela. I don’t know why young parents these days take the naming of their children into their own hands. I walked out of the hospital that day and burst into tears.

‘It’s a pretty name, Mother,’ Binnie said after she came home with the baby.

My two daughters began calling me ‘mother’ after they decided, when they were eleven and twelve years old, that they were going to speak English all the time. With Chappy away, and because of living in town and all the trading I had to do, English had become a habit with me also.

‘I didn’t say it wasn’t,’ I said to Binnie, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. I had not said anything about the naming and was determined I never would, but Binnie, and I suppose Lani, noticed that after several weeks I’d only ever called my granddaughter ‘Baby’ and ‘Baby Girl’.