It turned out that St. James forgot about our request for good weather and about mid-way along our seventeen mile trek, the heavens opened up on us enough that we had to stop several times to the let the worst of it pass. Even attaching Gus crosses proved to be a challenge as the wind swirled in all directions making Paul believe that he’d eventually wind up like War Horse – all tangled in barbed wire. The good news is that there was less mud and cow dung because most we took the route along the highway instead of through the rain-soaked forest. The bad news is that we could have lost our lives if any of those speeding trucks had hit us while their drivers were busy texting. We did make an interesting observation. We seem to be walking with more women than men. Women walking in large groups ahead of us, women walking in small groups behind us, women walking alone next to us. The few men we’ve seen so far seem to be walking with their wives. We walked behind a couple for a few miles that held hands the entire way – our hands were too busy with our poles and holding hands requires that you walk in step not a few paces ahead or behind each other like we do. When we finally arrived in Palas de Rei, we rewarded ourselves with a fine meal, pulpo (octopus) sautéed in olive oil and topped with sea salt, a tray of fine Galician meats and cheese, sangria for me, beer for Paul and the most delicious cheese flan ever.
Good Morning from Portomarin. We hit the road in Sarria early yesterday with lots of other pilgrims. While they continued on, we stopped at a little church along the way. It was quarter to eight and the church was practically deserted except for another couple of pilgrims and a handful of elderly locals. We were about to leave, thinking we’d arrived too late for the early mass or too early for the later mass, when a little red Peugeot raced around the corner pulling up across the street. The priest jumped out fully robbed urging everyone to hurry behind him as though he had something more important to do than saying Easter Mass. But perhaps it was just that he wanted to start on time and he knew he had to give his bell-ringer, a hunched over man in his mid to late eighties time to shuffle from his seat at the front of the church to the back to the ring the bell and to the front again before he could start. With the bell dutifully rung, he took a breath and finally looked around the room. He seemed thrilled to discover that with the addition of the four pilgrims his audience had swelled to a full ten people and proceeded to give a funny and inspiring sermon. Filled with new hope (at least I was since I understood the sermon and my translations for Paul were choppy and very behind), we started on the road. For the next seven hours we went up and down hills, up and down stairs, trudged through mud, sludge and cow droppings, while trying to make sure we did not miss the yellow arrows or scalloped shells that pointed us along the path. It was as beautiful as it was tiring. This morning however we are refreshed and ready to go. As we sit here having our breakfast of toast and cheese, what started off as a rain is dissolving into a beautiful bright blue day. We read somewhere that when things go your way – in this case we’d asked for decent weather – it is by intervention of St. James. So thank you St. James. We will walk another 17 miles today. See you on the other side.
Along the Camino from Sarria to Portomarin
Pilgrims leave rocks at the kilometer signs. We left a rock with Gus’ name and hung a cross.
Gus was in “remission” Easter of 2012. We celebrated the promise of that “new beginning” with an Easter egg hunt that had the kids solving mathematical clues and riddles to get to the big prize, a money filled golden egg. We took pictures of our three boys as usual, Gus there in the middle of his two much taller brothers, all smiles. I took a tentative breath and thanked God for another miracle. This time the miracle would not give us eight more years but just a few more months. Soon he complained of leg pain again. Soon he was back in chemo. Soon he was gone.
We planned to start “Our Camino” on Easter of 2013 not only because we could not bear to be home but because we were in-fact starting anew. Not all beginnings are happy and bright we’ve since discovered but they are beginnings nevertheless. A beginning we chose to greet with a saddened smile but a smile still in his honor . The following is a chronicle of our journey last year as originally posted privately to our closest family and friends (minus the grammatical and spelling errors). I hope it helps someone.
WE ARE WALKING – March 28, 2013
In just a few hours we will embark on “Our Camino”. We are likely over packed and under-prepared but excited and anxious. Why walk? After the year we’ve had why not just sit on a remote tropical island beach, staring off into the horizon sipping on fruity drinks? Because we can’t. In one of his first sermons after being elected Pope Francis said “Walking, our life is a journey and when we stop there is something wrong”. So we will walk. We will walk to try to move away from the pain of so much loss and towards the promise of our reunion. We will walk to honor the physical challenges that Gus endured without complaint or bitterness. We will walk to know that moving forward does not mean leaving him behind. We will walk because if we stop, we may never get up again. How appropriate that our “Camino” begins Easter Sunday.
Gus & His Nana – Both lost to us in June of 2012
Gus & his Great-Grandfather Juan who followed him to heaven in February of 2013.
WAITING TO WALK – March 30, 2013
Funny thing to say “waiting to walk” but we are. After almost twenty-five hours of planes and trains we arrived in Sarria (pronounced “sorry-uh”) early – very early Saturday morning. The train station, a smallish building that kind of looked like a house, was encased in fog just like in the movies. We were surprised to discover we’d been traveling with a number of other “pilgrims” who immediately took off on their journey. For a second we were a little embarrassed that our backpacks were inside the two enormous bags we dragged while they carried nothing more than their backpacks and that we were headed straight for our hotel while they hit the road after the long journey from Madrid. However, a quick whiff of myself got me over that bit of humiliation only to be replaced by the even bigger humiliation of just how loud two rolling bags can be over cobble stone streets. We are happy to report however that we do not appear to have awoken anyone (at least no one yelled at us) and that we were immediately given our room despite arriving far too early for check-in (no doubt they got a whiff of us too). We were able to take a nap, shower and eat before heading out to look around town and purchase our pilgrim shells. We will commence walking tomorrow because we intend to start walking refreshed and looking good!
Months before we sat across from each other picking out urns and niches, my husband and I sat next to each other convinced that we’d dodged another bullet. We’d just returned from San Francisco from a second round of radiating Gus’ entire body benignly called the “MIGB treatment”. It was not a painful procedure, just incredibly boring and uncomfortable for all of us. After receiving a high dose of radiation, Gus spent his time trapped behind a lead wall, while just outside his room, we sat on a padded chair that was provided and an office chair we stole, shoved into the corner of a small area between two patient rooms and the emergency exit. Gus’ bore his time with his usual good humor, chatting with his friends through his plastic covered i-pad and although we could get up and go at any time, we strapped ourselves into the chairs in solidarity. It might have only been ten days that we lived like this but when the time finally came to go, we pealed out of the parking lot as though we were breaking out of prison. Before we’d left, the doctor had filled our tank with hope. He’d announced that the “lights” (tumors appear on scans as lights) that once filled his body as though they were stars in the night sky had all gone out. Comforted by total darkness, we sped home towards a healthy future.
At home, we played what Gus wanted to play, watched what Gus wanted to watch and when we weren’t doing that – slept. On a rare Sunday that was not interrupted by cancer center check ups, we did what we used to do on Sundays, stayed home in our PJs and had a “lazy day”. Gus tired himself out that day trying to “prestige” on Call of Duty and went to bed early. For the first time in months my husband and I sat down to watch a movie of our choosing. We chose “The Way” with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, a movie I’d picked but had not had a chance to watch. We almost turned it off immediately when in the opening scene the son, played by Emilio, dies sending his father, Martin, off to Spain to pick up his body, but we stuck with it because there was something alluring about all that walking. As a semi-practicing Catholic, I’d heard of the Marion sites like Lourdes and Fatima and seen the pilgrims arrive on their knees at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, but I’d never heard of a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and when the movie was over, my husband and I promised each other that when the boys were gone we’d go on this pilgrimage ourselves. I wonder sometimes if we’d not said that out loud if the future would have unfolded differently because what we didn’t know then was that Gus would leave us on different Sunday. As it was six months later, with Gus’ passing and the older boys on their own – our boys were gone…
We began flirting with the idea of doing the Camino again. It was just a thought at first that took root and seemed to be confirmed that the universe was pushing us to do it by everyone we met. We met a man who would be doing it on bike in October and another who said he had a friend who’d done it and others who were thinking about it themselves. By December of 2012 we’d decided to walk the Camino for Gus starting Easter of 2013. I should mention now that Gus was not our only loss that year. On June 14, 2012 just ten days before our Gus, his grandmother Robyn Deppe would leave us a victim of lung cancer and seven months later my grandfather would join them after a long bout with Alzheimer’s. Walking became a necessity.
If we were going to walk 135 miles in ten days from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela and then on to Finisterre we would need the right gear and lots of practice. We went to REI for backpacks, shoes and clothes. We practiced walking first up and down small hills, then on and around hiking trails and finally on two consecutive days just to get the feel for it. We took Gus’ prayer cards with us and left them everywhere we could. For Christmas that year, my brother-in-law made us little crosses with Gus’ name for us to leave on our trails and my sister gave us a pack with the words “Live for Gus” stitched in yellow. When we boarded the plane on March 28th last year bound for Spain, we wondered if we could do it. Could we actually walk thirteen miles a day over ten days? Over the next couple of weeks I will reprint the blog that was originally published just for family and friends. It is hard to believe that twelve months have passed since we walked the Camino.
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