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CAMINO MEMORIES
Walking Away 500 Miles of Grief on Camino de Santiago
When I need a really long walk and lots of sky
“Someone is dying in a house across the street,” our guesthouse host told us, “Don’t be noisy.” The two British sisters, my roommates, peeked through the shutters with me. The street lights of St. Jean Pied de Port twinkled. Shuttered windows were closed. We whispered, respectfully quiet.
I confided my losses that first night before beginning the Camino de Santiago. My parents died within six months of each other. My new friends and I shared stories about our lives before falling asleep, like kids at summer camp. I was fifty-five years old. The sisters were in their thirties. They lost their brother the previous year.
People often walk Camino de Santiago in Spain to recover from grief. That’s exactly what drew me to the ancient pilgrimage. I desperately wanted to lose my sad aspect, to be myself again.
The day before, I arrived in Southern France, a little town called St. Jean Pied de Port (SJPP). The small village is on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains, and walking over the mountains to arrive in Spain was my first goal. The Camino de Santiago is often divided into 33 stages — and the most difficult stage of all is the first day. To walk…
