The voice in her ears was more than the echo of an old recording. It was vibrant. It was warm. It was the voice of her father — singer Don Ho.

Dondi Ho-Costa still thinks of that song, nearly a year after she heard it at on the porch of her Hanalei home, as a farewell from her father on the last day of his life. She feels it was more than coincidence.

"I believe he visited us," Ho-Costa said recently. "That may sound strange to people, but it is very, very private and precious to me. It was so powerful. I was overwhelmed at hearing it. It was so full of love."

The power of memories isn't taken lightly among family members of the late entertainer. As they prepare for tomorrow's first anniversary of his death, memories are the comfort they wrap around their grief like a blanket.

They have struggled to cope with their loss, thought about Ho almost every day and prayed.

They have dreamed about him so fiercely that they woke up with aching hearts.

And when they missed the sound of Ho's voice, they listened to one of his many albums.

When Ho-Costa visits her father's home on the flanks of Diamond Head, it often feels as if he is about to come walking into one of the many rooms, she said.

"I miss him, but it is amazing that I feel his essence and his love," said Ho-Costa, a 51-year-old clothing designer who lives on Kaua'i. "It's like a perfume. There is a lingering thing that is still with us."

Ho died April 14, 2007, shortly after collapsing in his home. He was 76.

It was not unexpected, but it still caught family members by surprise.

They had watched Ho's health deteriorate in the months before his death, despite the stem-cell therapy that appeared to correct a heart condition called cardiomyopathy.

Ho-Costa, the fourth of the singer's 10 children, was looking forward to a visit from her father. She and Liz Guevara, the mother of two of Ho's children, were busy preparing the Hanalei home for his visit when they learned of the singer's death.

They looked at the clock, did the math and discovered that he had passed away at the same time Guevara had put an iPod headset on Ho-Costa, playing "Beyond the Rainbow."

"It was a song that I used to dance to, that he would sing in his shows," Ho-Costa said, a soft sob in her throat.

The song about Hawai'i gave the women a sense of peace that morning, Guevara said.

"When he sang those words, when he said, 'When it calls to you, you must go there,' it was like my brain was illuminated," Guevara said. "My thought was I could see him singing this when he goes on to be with the lord."

NEAR THE END

The last year of Ho's life was difficult for his family, but now their experiences possess a bittersweet nostalgia as they savor the time they had.

"It's hard to get over this, but a part of me doesn't want to," said Dori Ho, the fifth of the singer's children. "You don't want to lose the memories."

The initial vitality Ho received from his stem-cell therapy in November 2005 had all but vanished by the fall of 2006, and Ho was hospitalized several times.

On one occasion, he called his family to his hospital bed because he feared his time was up after having flatlined three times, said Dori Ho, a 49-year-old accounting and business manager who lives in Kailua.

"That was one of the times that was really scary," she said. "They revived him and he was fighting for his life that day. Then he came out and he was OK."

But he would continue to draw his family closer to him, reaching out to be sure they were at peace with what was coming, she said. Family members visited often, and when Dori Ho stopped by a few days before her father's death, she was surprised at how healthy he looked.

"It put me at ease," she said. "We were all kind of worried about him but when I saw him, I thought I could relax. Then I couldn't believe it when I got the call. He was just doing so good. I thought everything was fine."

What followed for Dori Ho and the rest of the family was a year full of intense emotions — from a soaring Waikiki Beach memorial service attended by more than 10,000 fans to the untimely death of her sister, Dayna Ho-Henry, several days later.

"I don't know if we can recover," Dori Ho said. "I am hoping that one day we do and will go on. It's just the loss; you don't realize how much of your life it affects, especially when it is your father."

Ho's family — a complex 'ohana that includes children from a wife and two lovers as well as a second wife — knew a man far different than the boozy, sexy, Waikiki headliner audiences adored for 40 years.

He was more fatherly than famous.

When they put on his music, he told them to turn it off.

To them, he was the guy who walked around the house in a toolbelt and shorts, fixing whatever was broken, jokingly calling himself "the maintenance man."

He was the mentor, the shoulder to lean on, the glue that bound them.

"He was such a force in our life," said Kea Ho, 25, one of two children he had with Guevara. "I think about him every day. I dream about him. I can feel his face, like he is still there. It's hard to describe."

BEYOND THE GRIEF

A fashion editor in Los Angeles, Kea Ho said she grew up as a shy "daddy's girl" who felt uncomfortable whenever her father called her up to sing on stage. But during a hospitalization in the weeks before his death, the entertainer told his daughter that he needed to hear her sing.

She recorded a song called "Home."

"He kept that track next to his bed and next to his bedroom at home," Kea Ho said. "It meant a lot to him."

It may not be the last time she records something. Her father's death inspired her to think about getting on stage. Kea Ho has already written 15 songs, mostly about her father.

"Now that he is gone, that is something that I aspire to pursue more of because he wanted me to do that," she said.

Hoku Ho, the most established performer in the Waikiki headliner's family, turned to her work to cope with the loss of her father.

"It was a tailspin, but it wasn't a bad tailspin," she said.

She had braced for her father's death through half a dozen hospital visits. Although the 26-year-old recording artist lives in Dana Point, Calif., she traveled to Hawai'i often and called her father every day.

"I thought I would be able to deal with his dying but when he died, I literally fell apart," said Hoku Ho, whose mother, Patricia Swallie Choy, still lives in the Islands. "I couldn't get out of bed for weeks. I was a complete basket case. It took me a long time to realize I couldn't pick up the phone and call him."

Finishing a mini-album in July that sold online helped heal her broken heart. After that, she threw herself into recording another seven songs that may someday be packaged with the mini-album.

"I think he would be proud that I finished an album and went after what I wanted to do and that I did it in the midst of all I was going through emotionally," she said. "Now I feel like I can take on anything."

It's what Don Ho would have wanted to hear. His family was hurting, but it didn't give in to grief.

What father, famous or otherwise, wouldn't be proud of that?