A Path Traced by Sun – Rivena Dillon

A path traced by sun. This was the last line of a haiku Rivena wrote just a few months before she died. Today, it serves as what feels like a fitting epitaph to her.

She reaches to me
Beautiful and self-assured
A path traced by sun

You’ll find this epitaph inscribed on a small plaque at the base of a coconut palm tree at Sapphire Beach, which sits on the East End of the island of Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Sapphire Beach also happens to be the place we’ve chosen to run to for escape in the years since losing Rivena.

In the event you’re new to this blog, welcome. I began writing this as a way to advocate for our oldest daughter and have continued it since her death in 2018 in hopes of both keeping her memory alive and helping others deal with the inevitable part of living that is death. And above all else, it’s my way of continuing to work through the impossible task of living my own life while simultaneously grieving my oldest daughter.

Some Background

Kim and I first fell in love with the Caribbean when we took what felt like a super-lavish one-week cruise for our honeymoon. As a couple early twenty-somethings with no money and no real worldly experience, saying it felt super-lavish meant that we had a tiny water-level stateroom with a porthole, we got to eat what to us seemed like incredible meals, and we got to see a new exotic island every day of our trip.

That cruise set in motion a long history of exploring the various islands throughout the entire Caribbean. As we found some financial stability and success, we increasingly also found ourselves drawn to the white sand, clear water, and shades of turquoise that are so unique to the region. And we found the perfect combination of all of these in the Virgin Islands, somewhere we’ve been traveling to as a family for decades now.

In the early days of the internet, we stumbled into what became our go-to spot on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. There was one particular beach there that offered a few homes for rent, each with the elusive combination of direct beachfront access and a private pool. It would be a massive understatement to say we were super-fortunate back then to have an income that allowed for the rental of such properties – the homes we used to rent would simply be out of reach for us today. The best part? On multiple occasions, we were able to take our entire extended family to an exotic locale that was so far from the dry mountain air of Colorado as to feel magical.

I have such incredibly warm and happy memories of just being with our family on multiple trips to Virgin Gorda. And that’s the trick, isn’t it? To just be and not have to think or do.

In my mind, I flash to images of our kids just being kids in the pool. Of making a giant sandcastle on the beach with Madison on Father’s Day. Of Rivena grinning ear to ear while at the helm of a sailboat heading back from a day trip to Anegada. Of her coming face to face with a barracuda while swimming through an underwater cave at a popular snorkeling site called The Indians. Of my in-laws getting silly posing for photos while we enjoyed The Baths at sunset (completely by ourselves I might add… if you’ve ever been there, you know how rare that is). I could go on and on. Those collective memories cultivate what amounts to my happy place.

Why Sapphire?

If you’ve read this blog for a few years, you may remember that I talked before about how Kim and I needed to escape from the Christmas season and everything that came with it the year after we lost Rivena (Wading Back Into Christmas). Our means of escape was doing what we could to find that happy place; we found a month-long rental condo in a complex on St Thomas that my in-laws had been to a few times. It was right on the beach, with not a Christmas tree in sight, and it was the perfect place for Kim and me to spend the entire 2018 holiday season.

That escape was at Sapphire Beach, and we’ve been going back every year since then. The unique combination of condos right on the beach, a large beach that is great for swimming and snorkeling, a nice pool, and multiple places to eat and drink on the premises make Sapphire Beach a bit of a unicorn in the US Virgin Islands.

Every time we rented a unit, our wheels turned more and more. Could we afford to own a unit? Could we manage to get something in the right location? Over time, the thoughts shifted to how we could make a place our own.

And then one day after a two-week trip in 2022, we had an opportunity fall into our laps that we could not pass up. Having watched the local market for St Thomas over a few years, we knew very well that the condos on Sapphire Beach rarely actually hit the market. Even when units changed hands, the most desirable of them were almost never listed on the MLS. Instead, they nearly always were transactions done by word of mouth directly from one owner to the next.

As it happened on that trip, we had the good fortune of renting a unit from a couple who also live full time in another unit in the same complex. They were kind enough to answer a million and one questions about owning there. About what it took to pull off a complete renovation on the island. About how to ship everything from cars to building materials to home goods. And about what it was like to be part of an island community. We owe Cathy and Rick a huge debt of gratitude for those conversations and the many more that have come since.

Just a few days after we landed back home in Colorado from that trip, in what felt like the world’s biggest game of ‘telephone,’ we got word through my in-laws (who stayed on the island a week longer than Kim and me) from an owner who had caught wind that we may be looking to buy. She was helping yet another owner who was in fact looking to sell a unit in what we viewed as one of the most desirable locations at Sapphire. We were lucky to be able to have Scott and Bonita (Kim’s parents) get into the unit in question and take a few videos for us to know exactly what we were considering. And in a short 10-minute phone conversation with the seller, we came to an agreement to buy our new island home.

That set in motion a steady stream of activity. We should have thought ahead to film everything we did, because it ended up being something straight out of an HGTV show. We had to figure out how to not only plan for a renovation thousands of miles from Colorado, but also how to carry out that project on an island in the Caribbean. Fortunately, the unit we purchased is not big. It’s literally a 600 square foot studio, with a bathroom, a kitchen/living area, a bedroom, and a large beach-facing balcony. And it sits 100 feet from the water’s edge, with a beautiful beach the only thing separating our new home from the turquoise Caribbean Sea.

Kim had a vision for a design in the condo, and it became my job to make that vision come to life. Together, we spent the entire summer and most of the fall of 2023 doing a complete island renovation ourselves. We gutted the condo and rebuilt the interior exactly as we intended. Between Kim’s eye for style and my willingness to learn new skills – thanks in large part to YouTube and Google – we ended up with an island home that gives us access to that embedded “happy place” memory vault.

Forgive me for taking so much space to explain our story. But as we’ve found our way in a new community on the island, it’s also become obvious that everybody here has a story – their “why” for wanting to live on a small rock in the middle of the ocean. And for us, our back story helps to understand that ‘pinch me’ feeling that comes every time we get back on island, which now accounts for about a third of our year.

Rivena’s Haikus

During her final months, Rivena lived in a residential treatment center where she attempted to focus on her mental health. As you might imagine, things in an environment like that can be difficult, even more so for her given where she was. Her treatment center – the only one even remotely close to us where we could find both an available bed and some ability to use insurance coverage – was in Provo, Utah… the same Provo that is home to BYU, and where roughly 90% of the population are members of the LDS (aka Mormon) Church.

Always a creative soul, Rivena made a commitment to keep her creativity active despite being closely regulated and monitored by staff who could not remotely understand her unique perspective. She began writing both poetry and journals. And she started a daily ritual doing what has since become a true gift to us – writing a single haiku each day to capture whatever she was thinking in the moment.

Remember haikus from your time in school? Japanese in origin, they are such a simple format. Three lines. Five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. And they typically evoke images of the natural world. So simple, and yet with a creative author, capable of capturing incredible depth.

In the aftermath of Rivena’s death, we have constantly looked for opportunities to keep her name and memory alive. To that end, my mom and her husband have been incredibly generous, helping our family leave permanent markers in places we hold dear. For those who look closely, we have two memorial benches dedicated to Rivena – one in Reston, Virginia close to Mom’s home, and one along a walking path close to our home in Colorado. Both are inscribed with the same one of Rivena’s haikus:

The Tree

As it turned out, the week before Kim and I headed to the island for our first long stay in our newly renovated condo, there was a big windstorm that caused a huge palm tree right behind our unit to break in half. It was probably the oldest and tallest coconut palm on the beach, and we were bummed to see only the stump remaining when we arrived back on island last February.

About the same time, our condo association put out the call to all owners to say essentially, “hey, if anybody wants to donate a new tree to replace the one that fell, we’d love it.”

Given that we had been thinking about a way to do something in Rivena’s name, it felt like a tailor-made opportunity. We found the one remaining coconut palm of size on the island at one of the two nurseries on St Thomas and arranged to have it delivered to Sapphire. We worked with our maintenance crew to have it planted in a spot on the beach near the shore where we can see it every day from our condo.

And rather than a tombstone style sign, we opted instead to keep things simple, positive, and island appropriate. We added just the single line “A path traced by sun” along with Rivena’s name. That just felt right in a setting where the sun traces its daily path, and beachgoers regularly move with both the sun and the shade provided by the palms on the beach. As you saw in the introduction, here’s the full text of that haiku we chose to remember Rivena at her tree:

She reaches to me
Beautiful and self-assured
A path traced by sun

We planted that tree last March. In the ten months or so since, we’re happy to see it thriving. It has grown nearly two feet in its new home on the beach and survived the one tropical storm to reach St Thomas during the last hurricane season. If you’ve by chance seen the tree on the beach and wondered about the braces holding it in position, the nursery on the island recommended two full hurricane seasons of the ‘training wheels.’ To be fair, isn’t that something we all need – to get the right kind of support in our formative years?

As for the sea glass ringing the base of the tree today, Kim finds solace and a form of quiet meditation in hunting for those tumbled pieces of found treasure – it’s her version of what writing does for me. And as we continue to explore the beaches around our new island home, that sea glass around Rivena’s tree continues to expand.

Why does it matter?

Does planting a tree really do anything to bring back our daughter? No, of course not. But my reality is that I still miss her every day. I’d literally give anything to be able to have her back with us. I’ve been forced to work through grief in unexpected and painful ways, but I also know I’m not alone in this.

Grief is universal, meaning we all will experience it. How we each experience it is directly related to how deeply we’ve each been able to love. The pain I still carry every day, and the tears I still shed are the reminders that Rivena was worth having in this world with us. That her life mattered. That love is powerful.

Rivena’s tree serves as a daily reminder for me of that love. I get to see it and think of her every day I’m on St Thomas. And it makes us happy every time we see someone stop to read the plaque with her name. She really has left a path traced by sun.

Out of Darkness, Light

In a nice surprise on an emotionally dark day, we realized this week that the position of Rivena’s tree is perfect. I was up early to watch the sunrise on Tuesday, which was the 7-year marker of Rivena’s death. For me, January 28 will always be associated with the darkest day of my life.

Tuesday morning, I sat alone at the end of a point, thinking about Rivena, listening to some of her favorite music and watching the sun begin its morning ritual to the southeast. From our vantage point on the east end of St Thomas, the sun currently rises just to the south of the island of St John, which sits immediately to our east. After a truly spectacular sunrise, once the sun was well above the horizon, I walked to Rivena’s tree and took the photo you see below. Just like ancient civilizations such as the Incas or Mayans, I came to realize that on this day, the darkest day of my own world, the position of the sun is perfect to illuminate Rivena’s tree in what could not have been a more focused beam of nourishing light.

Her memory is still being traced by sun.

If you ever get to Sapphire Beach, please take a minute to find her tree, give it a touch, and think of her.

PS – if you’re looking for a place to stay at Sapphire, you’ll find our condo listed here: https://www.airbnb.com/h/sapphire-sanctuary-b208. We’d love to host you.