The grief book about Pancho Chapter One – Walking Backwards El Camino de Santiago de Compostella, also known as ‘the way of the stars’, has played an important role in my life for many years. This ancient pilgramages route originating in all parts of Europe, culminates in North West Spain at the Cathedral dedicated to San Jacques, St. James. It was made famous in the 90’s by Shirley McClain’s book The Camino and more recently, in 2011, the movie, The Way featuring Martin Sheen and Emilo Estevez was released once again bringing modern day attention to a pilgrimage made for over 800 years. The Way came out the year before Pancho died. It was one of the last movies we saw together in a theatre, one of our last dates. Pancho was my husband of 34 years and companion for almost 40. There are many reasons for walking the Camino, grief is one. When we saw the movie together I envisioned walking the Camino in Pancho’s memory as a part of my own walk of grief. Having outlived his cancer prognosis by 5 years we had accepted we most likely would not grow old together. Taking the pilgrimage was a long held traditions for spiritual or religious reasons, grief being one. The best know segment or the official Camino is over 500 miles, 740 kilometers. When Pancho died he was only 61 years old and I was 60. He had received a cancer diagnosis with a prognosis of a 50/50 chance of living 5 years. We’d had a lot of time, we were well prepared for the end, as prepared as you can be for our ultimate separation. At 60 years old, I had a bad knee. I believed I couldn’t walk the entire Camino in his memory, but, nine months after Pancho’s death our daughter Melissa and I met in Biarritz, France, each from separate corners of the world and each on our own road of grief. We were on a mission. We met at the airport in Biarritz, a small town on the southeast corner of France. It is only a short distance from the most famous jumping off point of the Camino, St. Jean Pied de Port. I drove in my rental car from southern Spain, and Melissa flew from ____________. She arrived with a severe sore throat, but would not be swayed from her itinerary. The morning she started the trek, we made a stop at a doctor’s office and on July 1, 2013, Melissa began her journey to honor Pancho, her dad. She would have to do it for both of us. I was dubious of her starting out sick. I knew the first leg over the mountains was difficult, but I accompanied her to pick up her antibiotics and our Camino passports in the office in St. Jean Pied de Port, we bought a scallop shell (a symbol pilgrams wear on their walk) and tied it to her backpack. By 10’oclock she began the first leg, a long one, climbing up the Pyrenees mountain. As she walked away she waved goodbye and I photographed her. Alone now, I stayed behind in the town, wandered around and bought a walking stick to give her at the end of the day. My plan was to accompany her for the first three legs, driving ahead and finding a refugio, hostel, or hotel. The previous night we had stayed in luxury accommodation, but for the rest of her trip she would stay in the refugios and hostels provided for the pilgrims by those who support the pilgrims of the Way. Those accomodations usually included a meal, bread, wine and a main course, which was an adequate prize for the end of each long day. At the end of the first day, I joined her for the pilgrim’s meal. We had agreed to meet in the town of her stopping point. I drove ahead, found a hostile and walked to the trail to begin my backward march hoping to meet her before her arrival. The first day I had only been walking a short distance when I saw her. She had found a young companion who spoke only a little English. She introduced us and then dove into the cold river that ran through the town fully clothed. A good way to wash her clothes. Our lodging that night was a step down from the previous night, but we enjoyed a meal with a couple who spoke only Spanish, and shared a pitcher of local table wine. Our third night we stayed at an official refugio high atop a hill in an ancient village. It was right outside the town Cathedral and the bell in the tower rang on the hour all day and night, making sleep a bit challenging. Once again I acted as photographer. We ate dinner around a table with a group of young men, mostly collage age and traveling alone. We were served large bowls heaping with spaghetti, green salad and homemade bread. After dinner we found a little shop so Melissa could find some food for her pack and she again set off early the next morning. I continued driving along the beautiful mountainous roads that were beginning now to change to flat terrain and wheat field. I had made the drive before. In 2005 Pancho, Beth my childhood friend, and I had traveled to Spain and France with the intention of walking 111 km from Sarria to Santiago de Compostella. It was the shortest segment on which you could be deemed ‘official pilgrim’s. On each leg you had to have your pilgrims passport stamped as proof and if in fact you reached the Cathedral in Santigo you could attend the pilgrims mass and receive your official documents. Beth and I had been planning that trip for over a year. She had excitedly written to me in an email: Every weekend leading up to our trip, Beth and I would meet to take a 5 to 6 mile walk in order to break in our shoes and our bodies. Pancho was planning to be our car escort as I was did with Melissa but it didn’t happen that way. When we arrived Beth was very ill. In Sarria she checked into a hotel and Pancho and I decided to make the 17 km leg together. It is one of the nicest legs of the pilgramage. The night before we left, we bought a walking stick. We each had our Scallop Shell from home which we hung from our fanny packs that acted as our packs. The church in Sarria provided a mass for pilgrims which we attended for a blessing. The morning we left we caught a taxi from the hotel to the track marked by yellow arrows, ancient markers and blue scallop shells. That taxi I took note, had a 444 car tag, a significant number for me. It took us all day, to walk the 17 km, passing wandering cows, wild Calla lilies, peasants working in their field, giant oaks, lady bugs sunning on bright green leaves and the well worn path and a few other pilgrims. Pancho, though he had cancer, was very fit, he surfed and fished every day, rode his bike or ran and had no need of the training Beth and I had endured. It was nearing sunset when we arrived at the hotel Beth had booked months before. We were both exhausted, me particularly and I had blisters all over my feet already. Our meal was delicious piaea and that night we fell into bed and slept soundly. The following morning a taxi picked us up to take us back down the road to meet Beth. The taxi, a different one, had a 444 car tag! I always photograph everything so I have a complete record of our journey. Beth was still sick. After another adventure too long to describe here, we opted to drive into Santiago the next day and tour the Cathedral, completing the tradition of knocking our brow on the pillar of wisdom and visiting the golden statue of St. Jacque. On that trip we actually drove the entire loop back to the beginning, taking the northern route through Galatia. It was a modern pilgrims tour. I remarked ‘older pilgrims do it in a car’ with a smile. Back on my tour with Melissa, I stayed several more nights. I told her I was going to be ‘walking backwards’ to meet her, as I said, intending to start at the end of the leg and walk until we met along the trail. She, knowing the quirkiness of her mother didn’t say anything until a few days later when she said, “you better be careful walking backwards, you could hurt your knee”. I realized she had envisioned me literally walking backwards, certainly an awkward way to complete the pilgrimage but she thought it must be some kind of weird spiritual gesture. We laughed. Walking backwards on the El Camino is a perfect metaphor for grief. It’s a pilgrimage, you can’t see where you going, you feel lost, blind, stumbling, slow and awkward and for both, grief and walking the Camino, a spiritual gesture is required. It was totally expectable that those around me who knew I had been helping people grieve for over 13 years as a hospice bereavement counselor would expect I should complete the experience with at least some kind of educated ease. Even I, naively thought I was totally prepared, strong and capable. I gathered within myself the bravado that I was ‘ready’. I convinced myself the death of my husband would be seamless, that our relationship would continue and we together would write this book about terminal illness, dying, death and beyond, (after he died.) We discussed it, he had agreed. I had been studying Near Death Experiences, After Death Communication, death itself since beginning my work with Hospice in 1999. But in truth, I was clueless. The experience for me was just as it is for everyone, unique, intimate, unpredictable and difficult. My saving grace was that I had stored in my memory the list of ‘expectable reactions’ which I could pull out at the appropriate times for comfort. I could remind myself, “I too, was not going crazy.’ The years between Pancho’s diagnosis and death were nothing more than a blur following his death. The truth was, at the end of his journey of cancer, I had no idea how many years it had been since his first diagnosis. Was it 2002, 2003? I couldn’t remember. With his diagnosis, I had begun a marathon of coping in my own personal style: rushing, staying busy, and avoiding the pain of grief to the best of my ability. An ill-advised way to cope and one I would never recommend. My advice to my grieving clients would have been to experience the pain of grief as they encountered it, to be honest with ourselves and sit with the pain but part of the uniqueness of our grief experience is what we bring to grief: our personalities, our previous experience with death, our spiritual beliefs and the relationship that was ending. My personality type on my favorite indicators of personality types, the Enneagram, was a 7, I would remind people. The way 7’s cope under stress is to avoid emotional pain; to stay busy in a flurry of activity, and that’s exactly what I did. I was too educated in this whole process, so educated that I would utilize my own advice and ‘medicine’ to cope in the best way I knew how, making all the mistakes blindly in the manner people do under stress. The journey actually began in November 2002 and ended in November 2012. Ten unbelievably blessed years of facing death alongside a man I’d known since we were a little more than teenagers. It was a relationship rich with an amazing opportunity to explore the full gamut of human emotions, illness and ultimately death itself. Coming to terms with death, whether it be the death of a loved one or our own, is a required part of the human curriculum. It is a part most people would prefer to avoid. So I began by walking backwards. For over a year, even though writing typically brought me great comfort, I couldn’t write. The only attempt I made was lost in a computer crash about 9 months after Pancho died. What I did have was an audio journal on the iPhone, the one that, Pancho gave me as an early Christmas gift in 2012 before he died in November. I kept a record of my own personal journey throughout the year leading up to the last year of his life and now I am going to walk back through it. I hope that perhaps walking with me might help others on the journey of grief, a journey very few can avoid.
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 09:54:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015