The left behinds

The Camino suits widows (and widowers). It’s safe and peaceful and we can walk our way through  a whole heap of freeing. Most of us feel better for the experience but it doesn’t provide any answers, especially to that old recurring  question - why? But it does provide distance, a break from life and time to see how brave you can really be. This is the thing that can change you and it changes your perspective of yourself.

The grief comes in all shapes and sizes but I meet mostly determined and gritty women. Ulla is from Denmark, she is 71 and still can’t believe what has happened to her and Rosie from the States is reeling from the shock of losing her husband to Alzheimer’s. She married him when she was almost a child. What now? 

And I met a determined Dutch man who said he was just going to keep walking til the pain went away. He had already walked from Holland; to Santiago and back, where he will end up is a anyone’s guess. 

We talk, share our stories and try to help each other make sense of it all. There are some mysterious “appearings” and unexplained  events that some attribute to a spiritual  connection. 

One person, after actually praying received a repeat of a seven-year-old email about a holiday she had had with her now dead husband. She believes it was not a co-incidence. 

I seem to be drawn to the widows and widowers. There is a softness in their eyes that I can recognise and I remember. 

I don’t think I have it now. We have laid Brian down on those cliffs by Llanes - and now we feel he  is just coming with us for the adventure. The sorrow has stayed behind. But I understand the people I meet, struggling and wrestling with an uncertain furture, the fear about how they will live alone and the terrible sense of loss that accompanies it all.

How lucky I am to finally feel that I have transcended it and Brian gets to stay forever on those lovely sunny cliffs. L