Last Day in Monterey (Day 19)

Tomorrow we will depart this beautiful Monterey town by the bay.  It has been a pleasure to wander about, especially on this Labor Day weekend, among the tourists who came to enjoy a holiday in this scenic place.  The fact that the Greek Festival was being held downtown was a bonus!  I think my mother-in-law’s list of chores has been checked off.  Spare light bulbs are in the pantry, new batteries placed in her various devices, new curtains hung, some shrubbery trimmed, and so on.  Life is tedious at 92 years of age.  There are so many things one cannot do anymore.  Visitors always have to leave, and my mother-in-law is already realizing that tomorrow she’ll be alone again.  We wish it were not so, but it is!  She will grieve our departure and we shall grieve too as we leave her once again.

Odysseus has been cleaned up, re-packed, and is now ready for the 3000-plus mile jaunt homeward.  Grandson Matt will be in Sonoma, CA with the Penske Racing Team in the next few days.  How I wish we could connect with him.  He was in Ft. Worth when we were Amarillo just a week or so ago, and now he’ll be in Sonoma just as we are leaving California! 

The road lies open before me again.  Which way shall I go?  I’d love to see Yosemite one more time—shall I go?  On the other hand, I still have the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on my bucket-list after three previous attempts curtailed by snow.  Shall I do both?  Why not?  With Nikos Kazantzakis, I can say, “I am free”—free to roam, free to see, free to dream, free to be!  My gratitude for this freedom I am experiencing now is inexpressible.  

At the funeral of a young adolescent,  a pastor friend lifted a line from the song “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables.  That line, “Now life has killed the dream I dreamed” was etched deep within me.  It comes to my consciousness often.  I’ve had storms I could not weather.  I’ve experienced forms of “hell” too.  But in this closing chapter of my journey,  life has allowed me to fulfill my dream of being “On the road again.”  How can I be anything other than utterly grateful that life has not killed this dream I dreamed!

But there are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I'm living

So different now from what it seemed

Cypress Tree by the Bay
in Monterey