CATEGORY: WINDING DOWN

You may wonder what the outcome was for Julie as a result of going to Jero Tapakan in Bali.  Jero was a body worker.  She lived in the mountains over an hours drive from Ubud.   After we had taken Julie to her three times, Julie, who had not been able to walk for quite some time, was able to walk from our rental car up the walkway, climb the three steep steps to our porch and walk into our room.  She was ecstatic.  That was when Jero Tapakan, with typical Balinese loving hospitality, asked Julie to stay at her compound for two weeks so she could work on her every day.  

It was the wrong thing to do.  This is my take on what happened:  Jero Tapakan did not know that people with MS should not eat sugar.  Julie knew it but she wanted to be polite and join in all that Jero offered.  Jero was so happy to have Julie there that she treated her to bakery donuts and other sweets every day.  As a result, when Julie got back she had regressed back to where she was in the beginning.  It was a sad ending, but we were all so glad that Julie had the chance to go with us to Bali.  

After she got back from Jero’s, I wheeled her around Ubud every day until we left.  We saw so much of the city and had a wonderful time!  Every place we went was lovely and so well maintained.  There were pink and white lotuses blooming in ponds and containers everywhere.  There were life size stone carvings of Komodo Dragons looking down from cliffs in one of the parks.  When the maids made the beds they arranged patterns of freshly picked flowers on the bedspreads.  Every morning we were awakened by a scratching sound.  It was a gardener scraping moss off the rocks of the high retaining wall in front of our cottage.  He also changed the beautiful flowers behind the ears of a statue of a goddess on our front lawn every day.  The shop keepers were the friendliest, gentlest, I have ever met.  As soon as they opened their shops in the morning, they put out little palm-leaf trays with the daily offering to the Gods.  They lived their religion.  

It was very inexpensive to stay in Bali at that time.  It was actually cheaper to stay in a lovely cottage and eat Satay (meat and vegetables roasted on sticks) in restaurants than it was to live in my own house at home.  I left Bali feeling better than I had felt in many years.  I often think of light and love coming down from heaven and blessing the people we met and the places we stayed.