I left Hawaii with a bag full of bones.

Not those petty trinkets from the Chinatown apothecary, or the polished remains from a Popeye plate. Not even the defiled bones of long-dead ancestors. I handled the bones of those who left not but long ago, for the dead should never be rushed.

My fellows preferred to handle the bones of the old; weak with years and scared with age. I however, detested the old bones. The old had long contemplated death when they sat barely alive in their beds. I felt no satisfaction in seeing their smiling faces when they came to my garden for their final journey.

I preferred to handle the bones of the young, drunk off the elixir of youth. Those who forget that immortality is nothing physical and content themselves with defying the rules of mortal men. They came to me with shattered bones, broken hearts and wasted spirits. I set them beneath the shadows of my garden where they sleep in restless silence, saddened that they would never know the truth of the wide world.

My garden was no resting place, but a stepping stone to the otherworld. Here among immortal blossoms beneath the shade of sacred trees I counseled those who ceased to live in this world, yet were unprepared for the next. I had taken care to chant the spells and plant the leaves that kept my garden and the spirits within safe and separate from the outside world, priding myself in the fact that the Night Marchers themselves changed their regular course for me. Beyond the picket fence and the hallowed ground existed the emerald beauty of the rainforest, dripping sweet drops of moisture from the well-traveled clouds. No wanderer or lost traveler dared brave the endless miles of forest land that surrounded my garden like the deserts of the Nile. Occasionally, I invited University the students to experience my garden, they in whose futures lay the stories of the dead.

“One must never rush to let go of the dead.” I advised them from beneath my breadfruit tree. “Would you--knowing you were leaving and never returning--be satisfied with a hasty ceremony? Let them leave in the way nature intended: slowly. Allow their flesh to become one with the Earth, their bones remaining as a memorial to their lives. Let the spirit accept that there is nothing to come back to, nothing to regret or fear. Let them fly to heaven free.”

Alas that even my religion was loosing value, and many wished for their loved-one’s bones sooner than I can deliver them. I still had the plans for one young man’s ossuary, half sketched and half colored, on my desk. So hasty were his parents demands that I even contemplated using agents to take his flesh faster. Such sins were not my wont, yet I barely scraped the bones clean before he was whisked away toward his permanent memorial.

So I was relieved when one young woman came to me with more reasonable demands. High off her recent academic victory, she and her friends drove over a cliff to be taken by the ocean. Unfortunately, I was called over the sea to speak at a fellow University that summer. I could not leave her alone and exposed in my home, So I dusted off my grandmother’s old sewing bag and carefully wrapped her bones inside.

I spread her bones over my hotel desk, counting the finger, the ribs, the toes; making sure I did not leave a bit of her behind. I cleaned the bones and rewrapped them, tucking them away as I began my lectures. Yet as the days and nights went by, I found myself gazing with longing at the setting sun, where beyond the cerulean sea I knew my homeland existed beneath the rays of eternal summer. Where the smell of golden fruit was ever in the air, and flowers soft as baby skin begged me to pluck them from the glistening trees. Often would I catch myself wishing for those things that I left so selfishly and hastily behind. Those things that I wanted to do, wanted to see, taste, smell and feel.

I sighed in regret one golden afternoon, and turned to find the young woman’s skull glaring at me, as if in distain. I nervously picked up the skull and examined her intently. The fading rays left eerie shadows upon her lifeless form, and as I slowly turned the skull towards the light, the face of distain was replaced with that of regret and great loss. As the light faded into inky blackness, the skull seemed to lighten in my hands, sorrow and remorse ebbing away to be replaced by sad, yet contented acceptance.

My absence from Eden was soon ended, and I soon found myself happily climbing up the steep road towards my garden once again. I halted half-way to my gate, taking in the beauty of my shower trees. A light breeze blew passed my face, brushing fallen petals against my cheek. I breathed in the soft fragrance of countless blossoms as I raised my head towards the sapphire sky, barely visible through the glistening emerald leaves and fluttering golden petals.

Reaching into the bag at my side, I carefully pulled out the young woman’s skull, showing her the beauty of my garden for the final time.

“How can you ever bear to leave this place?” I whispered. “It pained me to be gone for even a short while, how will I fair when it comes my time to leave forever?”

The wind suddenly shifted, and from my garden came the putrid odor of those whom I laid to wait beneath the sacred trees. From the wind came the words that I long preached over the young bones, the words that I used to comfort those restless spirits that lingered on, too attached to this earthly Eden and too ashamed of themselves to leave; the very words that I used to send them off into eternity:

“Take your time to say goodbye. Cherish everything. Regret nothing. Fly forth to heaven Free.”