My Journey

I got behind the wheel of the moving van and drove slowly down the driveway. I waved goodby to my sister standing on the hill and passed through the gate to the country road, following it towards the expressway and my 9 hour trip ahead.

What a difficult week. We had cleared out the family home, finding the small rickety desk my grandfather had made as a child, the love letters from our mother to our father, and the box of slides from the trip to Ireland. My mother had been transported to the nursing home where she would remain until her death. And we were there to cleanly and tidily put an end to the life she and my father had lived.

There was nothing unusual about this. It’s one of the jobs grown children are expected to do. Yet, part of me wanted to wail and cry to the moon to mark this horrendous tearing of what had seemed the strong fabric of our lives, and now seemed so poignantly fragile.

I sighed, cried, and drove and drove. Then, there was a sign for a rest area and I followed it. To my great relief, there was a separate parking lot for trucks with lots of space to turn around. I parked, put my head down and closed my eyes. But, my exhausted mind kept seeing the difficult scenes of the past week.

Then, suddenly, from somewhere above me, there came an unusual sound. A beautifully pitched trumpet had begun to play. I was astonished, closing my eyes and not moving. It played on and on; the notes soared and floated away. When finally it stopped, I stiffly got out and walked up the steep hill to the rest rooms. I knew I would not seek to know who the human player was. I preferred to imagine an angel musician perched on a cloud.

On my way down came the second surprise. It had been cloudy and overcast. Suddenly, before me, the clouds cracked, the mist shifted, and the sun shone through with amazing rays spreading over the hill, the truck below me, and the whole valley. I stopped again, feeling the sustenance, the reassurance, the promise for the possibilities of the future.

I continued my trip, understanding that the trumpet and the sunburst were miraculous gifts to guide my way.