We started traveling to the kauai in 2015. It started with just my husband and I, and we instantly fell in love with the island. Who wouldn’t love the jungle vibes, the warm air, the beautiful turquoise ocean, the small town feel, the romance of the vibes, the breeze in your hair as you drive with the top down, the Hawaiian culture, the kick back slower pace and being able to put your phone down and just completely check out….just be.
Years later, our girls turned 7, and we decided it was finally time to take them to our favorite place. They were old enough for the flight, and we knew life was short. It was time to build some memories outside of our home. There is just something about this island that makes you want to put your phone down, check out, and just be with your family, and that is exactly what we did. In fact, we loved it so much that we took them back two other times. We actually started calling it “our island.” Kind of our running joke as we loved it so much. Each year, we counted down the days until we could go back.
Sadly, after 2018, it was 5 years before we had been back. In 2019, Rylee was diagnosed with Pineoblastoma brain cancer. We spent the next 4 1/2 years caring for her through surgeries, ICU, medical flights, moving to San Diego for 4 months for treatment, pencil beam radiation, chemo, blood transfusion, platelet transfusions, therapies, and a million other things. After such a brave and courageous battle, we lost our sweet girl on June 27, 2023.
As you can only imagine, the minutes, days, and months after losing Rylee, have been a daily challenge, to say the least. The amount of heartache you feel is so enormous it’s almost as if someone is stabbing you in your heart. Did you know that broken heart syndrome is actually a thing? We didn’t know this until the loss of Rylee, and a doctor shared this info with us. I think we have all cried enough to fill the dark hole we have been in. We finally floated to the top to take a breath, and now we live to honor Rylee.
As we are about to travel to Kauai for the first time without her, we will hold Rylee with great respect. In doing so, we thought, let’s have a private celebration of life for her. I knew, as the Mom of this family, that we had to honor her. It just didn’t feel right to go to such a special place that Rylee loved and not celebrate her. I tracked down this woman who performed celebrations of life on the island. We connected on the phone, and I immediately knew she was the one to help me plan this. She was compassionate, loving, and kind. She asked all the right questions, knew the location we wanted, found a ukulele player, and ordered flower leis for us.
We discussed this celebration many times before we left as a family. I could tell Mike, my husband, was a little hesitant, and Reese wasn’t too sure but on board. I told them that they did not need to attend and there was no pressure. They took time to process it and ultimately decided to attend. I confirmed with Andrea a day before, and she agreed that everything was ready to go for the celebration. Andrea was fantastic, and I felt very confident in her ability to make it just what we had envisioned.
The day finally arrived mid-week of our stay on the island. I know I had some anticipatory anxiety for sure. Would I be able to hold it together? Would it turn out what I envision? Would Mike and Reese be fully present? Many moments before we left, I reached out to Rylee and asked her if she wasn’t too busy running her fields of flowers or riding her horses at the ocean and if she could join us on our trip. Well, she made it, and we had so many wonderful signs that she was present. First, we saw so many beautiful rainbows. We saw a sign on the beach that said we missed you bug, which was her nickname. We ran right into this lone sticker on a pole that said NY City with a rainbow over the top as she loved NY City. There was a guy on a golf cart who gave us the strict finger wave to go around him, just like Rylee used to do to us when she couldn’t speak very much. As we walked into the restaurant for breakfast, her favorite show, Impractical Jokers, was playing her favorite episode. Then, at lunch, we started talking to this guy at another table, and as he got up to leave, we looked down. He was wearing the exact same tie-dye shoes that Mike had. Last, we were at the pool that morning, and some kid out of nowhere came running towards the pool screaming Cannonball and jumping in, splashing us. We knew Rylee was with us….
As we drove up to Anine Beach, in the distance, I saw Andrea and I saw Tyler, who was going to play the ukulele for us. I felt a sense of peace come over me, knowing instantly that this was going to be something special. We walked up and gave them hugs, and Andrea assured me that she had found the perfect spot. We walked out to the beach, and it was beautiful. No one was around, the wind had died down, the sun was setting, and the waves were calm. Before we left for our trip, Reese and I went into Rylee’s room and gathered many of her favorite things to take with us. We grabbed her Paw Patrol characters, Reese took many of Rylee’s favorite matchbox cars, and I grabbed some mini My Little Pony characters. As we were on the beach, Reese wrote Rylee’s name in cursive in the sand. It was perfect, as Rylee was always so proud of herself for her cursive writing, especially since she had mastered her name. Reese and I then took all of Rylee’s favorite things and added them around her name in the sand. If you zoom in close to her name, you can see these favorite items of Rylee’s.
Andrea started by welcoming us and said some very kind things about Rylee that I had shared with her prior to this day. Mike spoke about Rylee and how there were three places Rylee loved: Disneyland, Tahoe, and Kauai. He spoke about fulfilling Rylee’s wish of coming back to the island in her honor and how much he loves, adores, and misses her. Reese spoke about how much she misses Rylee every single day, her smile, her laughter, and having a built-in best friend always by her side. She wished and hoped that she was safe and happy and that one day she would see her again. I spoke to Rylee, letting her know that living this life without her is truly unbearable. We are living in her honor now, and we are going to help other families get through the worst possible thing in their lives like we got through ours through the Rylee Grace Foundation. That I miss her every single day, and I thank her for protecting us and thanked her for so many amazing signs that she is always right by our sides.
After our beautiful words, Tyler started playing his ukulele and singing Somewhere over the Rainbow. During this time, we all noticed a red cardinal bird landing right by Tyler. This bird hopped over to Tyler and watched. Then, this bird hopped over to the writing in the sand. It started with the R and then continued to hop his way to Y, L, E, and E. It stopped at the end of her name and then flew off. If this wasn’t a sign that Rylee was with it, then I don’t know signs. Red Cardinals were Rylee’s favorite birds. We have quite a few videos of her feeding them on our balcony during the last few visits to Kauai. We hadn’t seen one since we had landed on Kauai until the Celebration. This was something special to get the honor to witness.
After Tyler sang a few beautiful, meaningful songs for us, we took our leis and walked to the water. It was a beautiful moment; just the three of us were gathered in a close circle. We each said some nice personal things to Rylee and tossed the leis in the ocean. We stood there with the sun on our faces, the breeze in our hair and warmth in our hearts as we watched them float away.
After the ceremony and talking with Tyler, we discovered that he also has been through brain trauma. He was born premature and needed brain surgery for fluid in his brain. Since then, he has had 4 more brain surgeries and is now doing very well. I mention this because people come into your life for a reason. Reasons you don’t know or understand at first, but you know you were just meant to meet them. Through Tyler’s life story, he could somewhat better understand what we had been through with Rylee. When you go through trauma, loss, or an unbearable situation, you become much more compassionate, and it makes you able to connect to others in a stronger way. You simply become a better, more understanding human.
A couple of days before the ceremony, we discovered this super cool healing shop in Hanalei. They had these fantastic rocks with symbols of peace and tranquility. We knew we wanted to take these rocks and leave them all over the island at Rylee’s favorite places. At first, this idea just became a thing we thought would be fun, but it ultimately turned into a mission. A mission of purpose and gave us a challenge each day because we knew we were doing this for us and Rylee. We decided our first throwing of these rocks would be into the ocean at Anini Beach. This was one of Rylee’s favorite beaches. In fact, the last time we were on that beach, Rylee packed all of her Paw Patrol characters. She brought them to the beach and set them up in the sand. We had walked down the beach to the tide poles for a few minutes, and after returning, all of her Paw Patrol characters were missing. We dug and dug in the sand and searched and searched for them, and they just disappeared. To this day, it is a mystery, but in my mind, I feel like this disappearance happened in order to keep Rylee’s legacy going. In my mind, each time a little child goes to that beach, they find a Paw Patrol character, and it absolutely makes their day. Their day is then filled with so much happiness, just like Rylee’s days were.
We also hid one of the rocks on the bluff of Queen Bath in a location no one could ever see. Rylee used to love sitting there on this bluff, in her chair, and watching the whales go by. We then made our way to the pool, and Mike climbed this rock area where no one would go and hid the rock deep in the foliage. Our final rock hiding place is pretty cool. We decided to go snorkeling with a guide. This guide wasn’t just any guide; it actually was the guide that took us out the last time we were all together on the island. He is a super cool person who has lived life to the fullest and simply gets the sadness of such loss. He told us to tuck the rock into our wetsuits, and he’d let us know when we were at the spot he was thinking. We spent the next 50 minutes snorkeling next to at least a dozen turtles, which was magical in itself. Our guide, Greg, stopped us and said ok, look down. We saw this huge, large coral rock below. He told us he had been diving there for years and that under that huge coral was a little lip, and he’d dive down and put in there. We agreed, and down he went. We watched him dive down with our special rock as very cool fish swam by and majestic turtles, too. It was truly a magical moment to see.
On our very last day, we had a nice dinner overlooking the huge majestic mountains of Hanalei. As we enjoyed our meal, we took a few minutes to discuss the highs for the week. Reese enjoyed our ATV trip through the jungle and loved the celebration of life. Mike’s number one was the celebration of life and swimming with the turtles. Mine was brave enough to even go to Kauai, swimming with the turtles and celebrating life. We all agreed that the highlight of our week was feeling close to Rylee, celebrating her, and hiding the rocks at her favorite places. Bravery is a special thing. We learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. We love you Rylee Grace more than anything in this world. Thank you for helping us be brave.
