Remembrance of Things Past

I have been in email correspondence with a student at Kenyon College in Ohio for the last couple of weeks. The student contacted me because I had blogged about my Camino walk and she was doing a paper on the subject. She wanted me to answer some questions about my experience and I gladly did so. This morning I received an email from her thanking me for taking the time to answer her questions. While going though the rest of my emails, I also went into my saved file and had a email I had saved in 2007 pop up first thing. This one was from a woman who was just getting ready to do the Camino and wrote to ask me how walking the Camino had affected my life. I wrote back the following:

How did walking the Camino affect my life? I haven't really thought about this and can only say ,at this point in time, walking the Camino has helped me to feel more comfortable with who I am and it has opened my heart and soul to what the universe has to offer.

As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy'. The Camino showed me that this statement is true.How could I not be affected by what happened to me on my walk?

It definitely changed me. I did not feel any different when I got home but my family said I had changed. It was a spiritual experience and it helped me see my mother's death as another spiritual experience. I was there when she died and I now know that my being there was a blessing.

But has it changed my life in any major ways? No, I pretty much live the same life I lived before the Camino. The only difference is I am more at peace with myself than I was before the walk.

I had forgotten I had written this but the words are still true. I am certainly more as peace now that I was before I did the walk- just not as at peace as I was when I first wrote those words. A reminder that I need to work on that?

Ce-le-bra-tion!

Celebrate good times, come on!
-Celebration by Kool and the Gang

Seven years ago today I was on a train racing though the Spanish countryside after completing my walk across Spain. Life moves fast.

I started this blog in December of 2002 and now, almost nine months later, I have reached the end of my story. At first I was only going to write about my walk but then I realized what has happened since then was, in some way, part of the story too. When I started writing this I used the pseudonym La Peregrina as a way to distance myself from what I was writing. I was afraid that what I was relating would sound crazy and unbelievable. Since I questioned the reality of it myself, I was fearful that other people would question it also. That is why I did not put an image of the Compostela I received at the end of my walk in this blog; my name is on it. Now I don't mind if anyone knows my name because I realize it does not matter if anyone believes me; the fact that someone might not does not change the truth.



Now I guess I am at the part where I sum up what I learned from all of this. So, here goes- What have I learned? I have no idea, unless it is hidden somewhere in what I wrote on August 26th:

Since birth I have been on a spiritual journey. In the beginning, the path I walk had numerous trails branching out from it and I veered off to walk many of them. Most meandered along not far from the path and then turned back to meet the path again. Some I followed lead nowhere and then disappeared. After floundering in fear, lost and alone, a gentle voice in my subconscious would guide me to one of the trails back toward the path or even directly to the path itself.

As I got older there seemed to be fewer trails that lead away from the path. I'm not sure if the trails are gone or if I just no longer see them. I find that sometimes when I think I am walking on the path I am really walking a trail that parallels it. Unlike the other trails I must make a conscious effort to return to the path. Now as I walk I wonder, did I pick the spiritual path or did it pick me?

Now, as I read those paragraphs, I see it does not matter whether I picked the path or it picked me. What matters is the journey and I certainly have been on quite a journey these last couple of years. It's time to take one of those side trails that lead to a quiet shady spot and sit down and rest for a spell.
Take care.
Colleen

November 2002

I've seemed to open a door I now cannot close. I'm getting that cramped feeling in my hand through out the day. Some times I find a pen and a piece of paper and let whoever is trying to contact me start writing. Most of the time the pen just draws a circle or makes long connected lines. Now I am getting scribbles and loops. A few times I get the lazy eight figure which I now see is shaped more like the symbol for infinity. Whenever I start drawing the infinity symbol I deliberately pull the pen away from the paper and then put them both away.

I can feel two different kinds of pressure on my hand now, one that squeezes to hard and one that has a lighter touch. The first one draws the infinity symbol and the second one draws the lines and scribbles. I have decided to ignore the cramped feeling if I have not initiated the communication by writing my mother a letter.

One day I write my letter and then start my mother's letter, including the phrase, "This is what I want to share with you," as usually. The pen moves across the paper making long curved lines. After the completion of each line the pressure in my hand goes away until I move the pen to a different section of the paper. Each time this happens I put the pen tip back down on the paper and watch as another line is drawn. After three lines the pressure goes away and I move the pen to the bottom of the paper and write, "I love you, Mom," finishing my mother's letter. When I am done writing these words I feel the pressure in my hand again and put the pen point back down on the paper. It starts drawing a line up the paper that stops under the words I have written on the top. The pressure disappears and I start moving the pen around over the paper and the pressure returns when I have the pen near the top of the page so I drop the point down onto the paper. This time a short line is drawn up to the words above and the pressure goes away. I pick up the pen and move it around. Near the center of the paper the pressure returns and I drop the point and watch as the pen makes a curved line that heads down to the bottom of the paper and stops at the letter "O" in the word "Mom" After this I move the pen over every section of the paper but the pressure does not return.

I have drawn three lines and it takes me a minute to see what they mean. One line stops at the word "you" in the phrase, "This is what I want to share with you." The second line point as the word "with." The third line points at the word "Mom." I have a message. It reads, "With you, Mom." I start crying. I am shocked and at the same time relieved by this message. My mother is gone but at the same time still with me. For some reason this thought makes me miss her even more. I cry for a long time.

Although I try to contact my mother the rest of the month, nothing happens. I think this is because (even though I want to contact her) I am afraid. Since this fear is stronger that the part of me that wants to talk to her, I am unable to relax enough to connect. Or maybe I am just trying too hard. Either way, I am going to stop writing to her for now and see if this helps.


December 2002

I feel it is time to write about my walk. I know if I don't start now I will never write about it. I have told family and friends that I would write about this experience and now feel the pressure of that promise. Right now I am trying to decide what form my writing should take. Should I write it on Works and send out copies when I am finished? No, thinking about doing it that way increases the pressure I feel. Should I write a day at a time in an e-mail like I did from the road? No, I want a copy and it's too easy to loose e-mail. Then I realize the way to do both is by writing it as a blog. This way everyone can read it if/when they want to and I will have my own copy.

After checking out all the instant blog companies I pick Blogger. Their website says that you can set up a blog quickly and easily with the added advantage of not having to know anything about HTML code. Both statements turn out to be false. If you want to change the way your blog looks or do anything beyond just typing in words you have to know code. When I set up my blog and see the edit page it has a lot of instructions that make absolutely no sense to me. My reaction when I do not understand something is to get a book and learn about the subject. I do the same now. After a little reading and walking around Blogger warily, poking it with a stick now and then to make sure it can't hurt me, I start tweaking my blog and figuring out how the whole thing works. The more I play with it the more confident I get. Finally, I reach the point where I know if I mess something up I can fix it.

Time to start writing.

Since birth I have been on a spiritual journey. In the beginning, the path I walk had numerous trails branching out from it and I veered off to walk many of them. Most meandered along not far from the path and then turned back to meet the path again. Some I followed lead nowhere and then disappeared. After floundering in fear, lost and alone, a gentle voice in my subconscious would guide me to one of the trails back toward the path or even directly to the path itself.

As I got older there seemed to be fewer trails that lead away from the path. I'm not sure if the trails are gone or if I just no longer see them. I find that sometimes when I think I am walking on the path I am really walking a trail that parallels it. Unlike the other trails I must make a conscious effort to return to the path. Now as I walk I wonder, did I pick the spiritual path or did it pick me?

October 2002
Part Two

On October 22 I have to drive to Denver for a dental appointment. The next day I am driving home across the eastern plains of Colorado when, unknown to me, I drive into an area that had icy rain earlier that morning. The road I am driving on is a two lane highway that sits about four feet above the fields on either side of it. I am driving along at 70mph with the cruise control on and a Sarah Vaughan CD playing loudly when I drive on to black ice. I feel the car's backend start sliding toward the right. Just before the tires lost traction and the car began sliding I had been singing the lyrics of a dopey song from the early 60's that had popped into my head:

Blue, Navy Blue, I am sad as I can be,
Cause my steady boy said ship ahoy,
And joined the Na-aa-vee.
Then I hit the ice.

I try to straighten the car out by gently steering to the right and the backend slides back towards center and then continues sliding to the left. I turn the steering wheel back to the left and turn off the cruise control. At the same time I whisper to myself, begging, "No, no, please, no," because I know I am going to fast to stop the skid and because I am afraid I am going to die. The second I turn off the cruise control I hear a big, "Thump!," and it feels like someone has kicked the right side of the car, which sends it into a spin. I take my hands off the steering wheel; remove my right foot from the gas petal and my left foot away from the brake, knowing there is nothing I can do to prevent what will happen next. I know at some point the car will slide over the edge of the road and then flip and start rolling. I am utterly calm. I am calm because I know I am no longer alone in the car.

Back in the early 90's I was in therapy. One day I was driving home from a session where all I talked about was my father. My father was an alcoholic. He was also unstable and suicidal. He wasn't around much during my childhood, leaving for good when I was thirteen. When I was 20 he killed himself. My first thought when I head he was dead was, "Good, he can't hurt anyone anymore, including himself."

What was bothering me that day was the fact that my father never said goodbye to me. Each time he left he went without a word. No, I'm wrong, one time he said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes and did not come back but all the other times he just disappeared. That day the more I talked about him the sadder I got. By the time I left the session I was slightly depressed. I kept thinking about it in the car and all of a sudden I realized that I had never said goodbye to him either. The thought stunned me. I whispered, "Goodbye, Daddy," and started crying. I was crying so hard I had to pull over to the side of the road and stop the car. As I sat there sobbing out my grief I suddenly felt a presence in the car. Someone was sitting next to me in the front passenger seat. I think it was my father.

Now I feel someone in this car with me and again I think it is my father. This is because of that silly song that popped into my head right before I hit the ice. My father was in the Navy during World War II and the Korean War. The Navy was a big part of his life even when he was no longer a part of it. Why else would I start singing that song?

The car does not leave the road but spins straight down the center of it. On the third spin I think, "People pay a lot of money at the amusement park to experience this." The fourth spin sends the car sliding off the road backend first and I watch in the rear view mirror as it races through the air toward a 10-foot high dirt embankment. As it is moving backward through the air it is also dropping and when it hits the ground the right front wheel catches in the dirt as the car whips around, slowing it down, until it stops about a foot away from and facing the embankment. I have been waiting for the screeching sound of metal ripping and glass imploding so the silence that now surrounds me is deafening. I sit there quietly while in my mind I bang my head against the steering wheel while screaming, "Leave me the f*** alone!" I feel like a puppy that has been lifted by the scruff on the neck and shaken soundly for not paying attention.

Whoever was in the car with me is now gone. What should I do now? The sound of CD playing blast through my head and I reach out and turn it off. I start the car and carefully drive back up onto the road. I have decided the only way to handle this is to pretend it did not happen.

The car seems to be OK but the steering wheel starts to shake when I reach 40mph so I pull over and get out of the car. As I step out I almost fall down because of the ice. By keeping my hands on the car I am able to walk around to the other side of it where I find the right front tire off the rim. I start walking back to a farm that I had passed. The only way I can do this is by carefully stepping on the rumble bars scored into the asphalt along the edge of the road. The couple in the farmhouse is very kind to me and the husband drives me back to my car and puts the spare tire on for me. I drive to the next town where they replace my damaged time and I then continue homeward.

It isn't until about a week later that the full impact of what happened hits me. I can't understand how I could have an accident like that and walk away unhurt. I should at least have a damaged car. The only reason the tire had to be replaced is because I drove on it after it was flat. I am in agony wondering why I am still alive. This bout of angst sends me back to Shirley Maclaine's website. I write about my accident and ask why I am not dead. I have a lot of replies and I am surprised by how caring people are as they try to help me as I grapple with this. In the end I decide just to let go; the same way I let go in the car when I knew there was nothing I could do. Sometimes you have to just accept and not question.

October 2002

Ever since my mother died I've felt like I tripped and have fallen down a long slippery slope that has no bottom. Since the end of August I have been writing to my mother as LL said my mother wants. First I write my letter to her and then I write a letter to myself from her. It begins, "Dear _____, This is what I want to share with you." Then I make small connecting circles across the page. When I get to the bottom of the paper I write, "I love you, Mom." My mother is supposed to take over the letter writing at some point as I do this and until the second week of this month nothing has happened. Then I start getting a cramped feeling in my hand each time I reach the circle making part. By the middle of the week the cramp is strong enough to be uncomfortable. Then the pen starts moving on its own. I am not consciously making the pen move, but it does.

The pen moves slowly and hesitantly as it draws a light line haphazardly across the paper. Then it starts making a large circle. I get scared and lift the pen away from the paper. The moment I do this the cramped feeling leaves my hand. I move the pen back over the paper and feel my hand cramping again. About a quarter inch above the paper the pen forcefully pulls itself onto the paper and I hear a sharp snap as the pen makes contact with the paper. As I watch I feel my skin start to crawl. What is going on? The pen makes a large circle on the paper and then traces over it several times. Then it starts making a figure eight. As it traces over the eight it starts moving faster and faster, the line becomes stronger and stronger, until there is a dark blue figure eight drawn. At this point I lift the pen off the paper because I am very frightened by this. Again the instant I pull the pen away the cramped feeling in my hand vanishes. I decide I am done with this for the day and put the pen and paper away.

Even though what has happened scares me it also fascinates me too and I try it again the next day and the day after that. Both times the pen moves on its own, my hand cramps, and I draw a figure eight. But the third time I try the figure eight is drawn lying on its side and the speed of the tracing is much faster. It is so fast I can only stare at it in amazement. The eight gets darker and darker and thicker and thicker. There is so much ink on the page the side of my hand starts to smear it across the paper and the drawing. The cramping in my hand is so strong it becomes uncomfortable. I want to keep going to see how long this will go on but I am also very afraid. I put my hand away and the cramped feeling disappears.

I sit there staring at the figure eight not sure what to think. Am I doing this unconsciously? If I am, how can I make the pen move so rapidly? I've never done it before in my live. Then I have a terrifying moment of clarity. My hand is not cramping. I remember feeling this sensation before when I was a child. It is the same feeling I had in my hand when my teacher put her hand over mine as she helped me form letters and words when I was learning to write. Only whoever is doing this now is squeezing my hand so tightly it almost hurts. Now I am really scared. Who am I in contact with, Captain Howdy? What's next? Will my head spin around 360 degrees; as I start projectile vomiting green pea soup across the room? I am so unnerved by this I decide to leave it alone for a while.

September 2002

A year ago this month I was in Spain. Maybe that is why it is on my mind all the time. I can't seem to stop thinking about it and I am sleepwalking again. My body will be walking to the post office and my mind will be walking the Camino. I am also thinking about all that has happened since I got back from my walk and I still have trouble wrapping my mind around it. Although I know that everything I have seen and heard is real, I still find all of it somewhat unbelievable and fantastic.

I do not understand why I am thinking about the Camino so much. I need to find someone else who has walked the Camino and see if they have gone through the same thing I am going through now. I decide the best place to find someone would be at Shirley Maclaine's website. So, I go there and leave a message asking if anyone has walked the Camino and, if so, how the experience affected them a year later. I do not find anyone but I do have people asking me what it was like. At first I am hesitant to answer because I still do not remember much. In fact, when I read through the notes I wrote during my walk, most of it does not mean anything to me. I do write about what I can remember and find if someone ask me a direct question I can remember more than I thought. The act of writing seems to open closed doors in my mind.

Each time I visit the website I only spend a short amount of time because I do not feel safe. I think this is because I do not really want to talk about anything that happened because I am afraid of what people will think. Will they believe me? Will they think I am crazy? The feeling that writing about it dangerous gets so strong; I start thinking that people at the website are talking about me behind my back. I can't believe how paranoid I am getting about this. Then something happens that makes me think I was right to be afraid. I start a back and forth dialogue with two people and write about some of the stranger things that have happened and , on two different days, each one tells me that they are not going to be able to answer my messages anymore because they are going away for awhile. It isn't until two days later that I realize I had been given a polite brush-off. I feel like a fool. They don't believe me. Then I get angry. How can they not believe me? They are at Shirley Maclaine's website, she has said things that sound unbelievable too. The irony of this makes me laugh. I decide not to go back. I don't need these people judging me.

August 2002

My mother's death is still affecting me. I am going through the "would of, should of, could of's," and regretting some of this things I did or didn't do. Right now I am feeling guilty about going on the walk. My mother asked me to come to visit her several times before I finally went out to see her. Each time she asked I said I did not have the money to come out and that I would try to visit later. I did not want to go because of what was going on between her and my brother. It was hard to handle it from 1,200 miles away and the last thing I wanted was to be right in the middle of it. Then the walk came up and I had to tell her that I was going to Spain instead of coming to see her. She said she understood but I could feel that she was angry about it. I know I cannot change anything but, just the same, I can't seem to get past the guilt.

There is a Metaphysical Fair at the end of the month so I call my sister in Denver and ask if she would like to go. She says yes. We talk about the fair a little and then she tells me objects seem to be moving around in her house. I tell her it sounds like Mom is living with her now. We both laugh. I ask her if we should try and contact Mom at the Fair and she eagerly says yes. I tell her I will see her next weekend and hang up.

When we arrive at the fair the first thing we do is look for LL. When we find her we ask if she can help us talk to our mother. She says yes so we sign up for a reading in the afternoon. Later after eating lunch and wandering around the booths we make our way back to LL's table and sit down. I tell her what has been going on and how it has upset me. To make me feel more comfortable she tells us about the first time her grandfather contacted her after he died and how upsetting that was for her. For some reason this does calm me and we begin.

LL tells us Mom is here with her angels and that Mom's angels want me to know that they are the ones who sent me on my walk. They did this because they wanted me to be prepared to hear my mother, to see here, and to not be afraid. They also want me to know that at times on my walk I reached a "spiritual depth." Then LL tells us that when Mom died she did not feel done with her life. When she was a kid she thought 70 was old and believed she was going to die at that age but in her 70's she realized it wasn't old. When she realized she was dying she did not want to leave so soon. Dying left her feeling unfinished with her life. LL then says Mom has a female guide with her to help her to communicate with us. She says Mom wants the two of us (my sister and I) to get journals and write to her every day for three months and that she will write back. She says Mom uses the photo of the Virgin Mary statute I took in Spain to meditate on.

I ask if Mom is mad at me for going to Spain instead of visiting her and LL says, "she doesn't care." My sister and I laugh because LL says this with the same vocal inflections of our mother along with the same facial expression and hand gestures our mother used whenever she used the phrase, "I don't care." Then LL tells us Mom wasn't mad at me for going on the walk but jealous because I got to go and she didn't. LL pauses for a minute listening to something we cannot hear and then says, "Ahhh, Your mother is going to do the walk herself." That when she does the walk she will do the "hard path" and walking it as a "multi-dimensional being." She will be doing these walks for the next three years.

LL then tells us that on the Camino people always report seeing spirit beings and angels walking alone. When Mom does the walk she is going to be with another spirit and people will see them. They will be doing the walk with a group of people and these people will think Mom and the other spirit are real people. Then later during the walk Mom and this other spirit will help these people as angels. Mom is doing the walk for her own spiritual growth, to offer healing for her life. Mom is sorry for some of the horrible things she did to us. She is going on the walk to suffer. Not to suffer in the way we think suffering is but a healing suffering "like lighting a candle but not putting your finger in it." She will do the walk five times because there are thing in her live time that she needs to "light the candle and burn the paper."

At this point my sister tells LL that our mother had five children. Of course, one walk for each of us. LL then says our mother gave each of her children five different lives. We each got a different part of her. My sister asks if Mom is going to help five different people in the different ways she could have helped her children, if she had been able to when she was alive. LL says yes. There is another pause then LL says my mother is telling her that I was a gift to her by going on the walk. By me going on the walk I gave my mother permission to do what she needs to do. Mom says not to feel guilty for anything because if we do not feel guilty, it will help her not to feel guilty. Our mother wants to be a good mother and help us from the other side in the way she was not able to do in life.

LL asks us if there is anything else we want to know and I ask if Mom understands that we always loved her, no matter what she did or didn't do. LL says yes and that our mother wants us to know she loves us very much too. Then it is over and Mom is gone.

During the reading the rest of the world had faded away and now I hear the noise of the crowds surrounding us. I am exhausted because of the emotional roller coaster I have been on. What I heard either delighted me, or surprised me, or gave me a sense of relief. I am delighted that Mom is going to do the walk. I am surprised by it too. I am relieved that she is not angry with me for going on the walk. It makes sense that she was jealous because she always hated being left behind. Well, Mom, you are leading the way now.

That night at my sister's house she and I talk about Mom and the days events. We are glad we did this and feel a lot better about our mother's death . I realize now that my mother is not really gone but just in another room that I cannot enter yet. This thought comforts me. We talk about Mom doing the walk and I tell her the story of the Glowing Man. She says she thinks the man was walking with a spirit, maybe someone who had not finished the walk in life. Then she says this is the first time I have talked about my trip. I nod. I think today was a healing experience for me. That is why the walk is no longer in a black hole deep inside me. It has been released and I am now able to talk about it. I remember when I saw LL back in March she told me that I should write about the walk but I brushed the suggestion off. I knew I could not do it at that time. Now, I think I can write about it. Well.....not right now. Maybe sometime in the future.

June/July 2002

June is a hard month because the 5th is my mother's birthday. Her death is still fresh and most of the time I forget she is gone. Then, unexpectedly, something will make me think of her and I remember she is no longer here. This knowledge hits me like an ice-cold bucket of water and each time I take a deep quick breath of shock. But on the 5th I remember she is dead and I ache to call her on the phone, wish her a happy birthday, and hear her voice.

The towel stays on the microwave each night but other strange things are happening. Someone is waking me up in the middle of the night. Twice it has happened while I am lying on my side with my left are stretched out off the bed. Very firmly, someone taps me twice on my inner forearm. Each time I instantly wake up and think of my 12-year-old niece. One morning I am so tired that after my husband gets out of bed I start drifting back to sleep. Someone taps me on the top of my right shoulder while I am lying on my back; again I wake up instantly. I look over at my husband's side of the bed and find it empty. At the same time I hear my husband opening the garage door at the back of the house.

Then there are the times someone calls my name. Each time this happens I am in bed and just drifting off when I clearly hear someone say my name. Each time I feel the person calling me is standing right beside me with their lips just inches from my ear. One night when I hear the voice I think of my sister in Denver and the next morning I call her to see if she is all right.

Each time something happens I am mildly surprised by the fact that I am not afraid. What is happening is not normal but it just doesn't seem to scare me.

May 2002

No, this is the strange month.

Before I tell you what happened I have to describe the layout of my house. I live in a small house with a main floor and a basement. The layout on the main floor is as follows. First, draw a square and then draw a line straight down the middle of the square and another line across the center of the square turning the big square into four little squares. The top square on the left is the living room and the top square on the right is the dining room. Erase the line between the two top squares making one living/dining area. Now you have a large rectangle and two small squares. The bottom left square is the bedroom and the bottom right square is the kitchen.

At the lower corner of the living area on the wall between it and the bedroom erase some of the line to make a doorway. At the lower corner of the dining area on the wall between the dining area and the kitchen erase some of the line to make another doorway. At the lower left corner of the kitchen on the outer wall erase some of the line to make another doorway that goes to the bathroom (yes, the bathroom is off the kitchen because this is an old house and that's how they built it). At the same corner but on the wall between the bedroom and the kitchen erase some of that line to make the last doorway.

If you draw the doorways between the main rooms correctly you can circle the inside of the house without walking into any walls. The house is built this way because it only has a heating stove in the dining area. All the doorways allow the heat to circulate through the house in the winter. They also allow the cool air from a window air conditioner in the living area to circulate in the summer.

Now, in the kitchen against the wall between the bedroom and the kitchen is the stove and right beside it on the wall between the kitchen and the dining area are three shelves. On the middle shelf is a microwave. The display light on the microwave is so bright that it spills into the bedroom at night making it difficult to sleep. Because of this I always drape a kitchen towel (the one hangs on the oven door handle) over the front of the microwave before I go to bed at night. I put a kitchen timer on the towel to hold it in place.

All this month, at odd intervals, I find the towel back on the oven door after I drape it over the front of the microwave. As first when I find the towel on the stove I think I just forgot to put it on the microwave that night. A couple of nights I ask my husband if he used the towel to dry his hands and then hung it over the oven door instead of putting it back on the microwave and he tells me no. A few nights I have been awakened by the light from the microwave and have gone into the kitchen to put the towel over the microwave. Each time I am not really sure if I put the towel there before I went to bed.

Then one night on my way to take a shower I stop to put the towel over the microwave. After my shower I open the bathroom door and see the towel hanging from the oven door. This time I know I put the towel on the microwave and I get very upset because I think my husband has been playing a trick on me. He is in bed reading and I look at him and angrily ask him if he moved the towel from the microwave. He looks at me in total surprise and say no. Then I realize who has been moving the towel. It's my mother. This shocks and scares me so much I say out loud, "Mom, I know this is you. Please don't do this anymore, it's scaring me." For the rest of the month the towel stays where I put it.

April 2002

This is a strange month.

My sister calls from the Netherlands. Last time I talked to her she was still in California. She stayed in LA a few days visiting friends and then drove back down to San Diego to pick up some of Mom's ashes. While she was pouring the ashes into her bottle a snap fell out. She was a little freaked because she realized the only place it could have come from was Mom's hospital gown. Now she is calling to tell me that when she got back home to the Netherlands she found the same type of snap laying on the front steps of her house.

A few days later I am walking home form the Post Office with a package that my brother sent me. It holds our mother's ashes and as I walk I am very conscious of this fact. When I get home I open the package and pull out a round metal candy box and slowly open it. Inside is a carefully sealed gallon size plastic storage bag containing my mother's ashes. When I see this I loose it and sit down sobbing. My husband comes in the room and after seeing the ashes walks over and hugs me. After I stop crying I get up and transfer some of the ashes into the Bencharong bowl I bought and my husband puts some silicone gel around the edge of the lid and we seal the bowl. I will take the ashes left in the candy box to Denver for my youngest sister.

I finally decide the time is right to do the aura cleansing ritual LL has given me. I no longer can live feeling like I have been ripped in two. I lay the crystals I bought in a circle on my living room carpet and then pick a CD to listen to while I am lying down. LL said to choose something that makes me happy so I pick Snoopy's Jazz Classiks On Toys, a collection of songs played on toy musical instruments. After I start the CD player I step into the crystal circle and lie down. The instant my head touches the floor I am over come with a feeling of deep sadness and start crying. I am crying so hard that my tears are running down the sides of my face in two tiny streams. I am crying tears of sadness, tears of grief, tears of loneliness, tears of loss. I sob and sob. I am so deep into this that I no longer hear the CD playing.

After a while my tears ease and I come back to my surroundings. I can hear the CD playing and I start laughing in delight when I realize the song playing is Put On A Happy Face.

Gray skies are going to clear up, put on a happy face.
Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face.
And spread sunshine all over the place, just put on a happy face.

As I lie there listening to the song I feel totally relaxed. I am supposed to stay in the circle for at least a half hour but after 20 minutes it starts getting harder and harder for me to lie still. I sneak a look at the clock after what I think is five minutes but the clock hand has only counted off 30 seconds. I fight the urge to stand up and step out of the circle. I decide to sit up, close my eyes, and concentrate on my breathing in the hope that this will calm me and make staying in the circle bearable.

I breath slowly and deeply until the floor under me softens and I sink down into it like it was a cushion. As I drop down I am aware of the sun warming my face. Part of me knows this is not possible because I am not sitting where sunlight can reach me but still, l I tilt my head back to bask in its warmth. I know I am standing on a mountain top and can feel a slight wind pushing against me. I'm sure if I open my eyes I will see that I am standing on the mountain in the Pyrenees where the statute of the Virgin Mary is. I keep breathing deeply, enjoying the almost quiet that surrounds me. The only sound is the wind as it passes by my ears. Then, I can see the mountains around me, the bright blue sky above, and the road winding it's way up the mountain toward me.

I realize I am not standing next to the statue; I am the statue. No, the statue and I are one. As I think this I no longer feel ripped apart but whole, like a double exposure that has merged into one solid image. Slowly what I see fades into the darkness behind my eyes and I come back into the room where I sit. I open my eyes and look at the clock; it has been exactly 30 minutes since I stepped into the circle.

Later in the month I am working at the town library. It is a Saturday, one hour before closing, and I am the only person in the building. I am sitting behind the counter reading when I hear a soft "womp" sound behind me. I turn to the sound but see nothing so I get up and walk around the counter. There in the middle of the floor is a book. I reach down, pick it up, and see that it is a copy of Bill Bryson's book, Notes From A Small Island; his book about his travels around England. This copy is the one my mother, who was an Anglophile, gave to the library.

Since I had walked across the spot where the book was laying about 15 minutes before I can't understand how it got there. Maybe it fell off the top of a bookcase. I stand the book up on one of the bookcases and tip it over so that it lands on the floor. Not even close to where it was laying. I repeat the experiment on all the bookcases and each time the book lands nowhere near where I found it.

Is this my mother's doing? First my sister finds that snap on her doorstep and now a book that my mother gave to the library drops out of the air and lands in a spot where it should not be. Mom, are you trying to tell us you are still here?

March 2002
Part Four

The next morning we meet our brother and sister over at our mother's studio apartment and start boxing up and removing her things. We break her bed down and lean the pieces against a wall. My sister suggests we stay in Mom's apartment the rest of our time here in San Diego. At first I am not sure I want to because it is a little unsettling to be in her apartment now that she is gone. But after thinking about it I agree to it. It will be cheaper than another motel room.

On Monday my sister and I drive to the mortuary, arriving before our younger sister and our brother and his wife. We are taken into a meeting room and asked to fill out a form that will be used as a funeral notice in the local paper. I'm never sure when something is going to make me cry and I am surprised when I start crying after filling out the form. By the time we finish it my brother and other sister have arrived . My sister, who was not there when our mother died, wants to see her body and we are told that this can be arranged. I ask my sister if she really wants to do this (we are not sure how Mom looks now) and she says yes.

We are lead downstairs and into a large room and then to a hallway. When I turn the corner into the hallway I am shocked to discover it is not a hallway but a smaller room where my mother's body lies. I quickly turn around and step back into the other room. The image of my mother lying there is burned into my brain. How did my mother look? Did she still look like our mother? Yes, I was shocked only because I did not expect to see her.

My sisters have just entered the larger room and are walking toward me. I tell them Mom is just around the corner and that she looks fine. Do they want to go in and see her? Yes they do. We step into the room and walk over to her body. As I look at her this time, I realize I am seeing my mother as she really looked for the first time in many years. The medications the doctors gave her made her face and body puffy. In death the fluids have drained away and she is more beautiful than I remember. I forgot how thin her nose is. How pronounced her cheekbones are. How long her eyelashes are. I touch her forehead and stroke her hair one more time, say goodbye, and leave. Both my youngest sister and my brother follow me out and we leave our other sister along with our mother.

After a while, our sister joins us, she is crying but feels better after spending time with our mother and saying her goodbyes. We stand around in the parking lot not sure what to do next. My brother and his wife have some things to do so they say goodbye and leave us. My sisters and I decide to go to the beach. We head for a funky area of San Diego called Ocean Beach and wander through the shops. At some point our wanderings turn into a search for containers for our mother's ashes. We spend the afternoon searching for the right container for each of us. I pick a Bencharong ceramic bowl. My sister finds a delicate old glass perfume bottle with a beautiful stopper, it looks like it could contain a Genie. My youngest sister picks a small daintily painted porcelain snuffbox. When we get back to our brother's home we find out he has also bought a container for our mother's ashes too, a small brass urn.

The next day I wake up early in a panic. I sit up in bed, half awake, thinking, "Mom's not dead. She's just sleeping. We've got to go get her out of the mortuary before they cremate her!" Then I am fully awake and I know that this is wishful thinking, my mother is dead, nothing I do can change that. Feeling hopeless, I lie back down and fall back to sleep.

The following in day my brother drives my youngest sister and I to the airport for our flight home. Our other sister is heading up to LA so we say goodbye at our brother's house and my brother tell my sister to follow him to the freeway, there she can continue on to LA. When we reach the freeway my youngest sister's cell phone rings, it is our sister telling us she has decided to follow us to the airport and then head for LA. When we get to the airport my brother parks in front of the terminal and we all get out. My sister, who has been following us, parks behind him and gets out too. She looks like a lost and lonely little girl trying not to cry, the little girl I talked to on the phone after she learned our mother had died.

When we were young I always tried to protect my sisters. Right now I feel torn, I don't want to leave her here to make that drive up to LA by herself. I want to protect her from the pain of our mother's death but I know I cannot, no matter how hard I try. She is not a little girl anymore but a strong woman who can take care of herself. I give her a hug, tell her I love her, and let her go.

My mother's death has made me understand how fragile families are and how quickly they can fracture. Our family, in a way, was three families. First, there was the family that consisted of our parents and us, their children. Then there was a second family that was just our mother and us, her children. Hidden in the center of these two families was a third family. The first family ended when our father left us for good when I was thirteen years old. The second family ends with our mother's death revealing the third family; my brother, my sisters, and me. This family has always been my center. This family is the one that makes me feel I'm not alone in the world. This is a good feeling.

March 2002
Part Three

As our mother dies, my other sister is somewhere over the United States flying nonstop to Los Angeles from London. Her plane is scheduled to land around five o'clock. She is going to rent a car and drive down to San Diego. We decide to drive to LA and try to reach her before she starts the drive down to us. We do not thinks she should be alone when she learns Mom is gone. It is Friday afternoon and the San Diego Freeway is packed with cars headed in the same direction as we are. There is an accident somewhere up ahead and right now the expressway is like a parking lot after a music concert, jammed with cars trying to leave at the same time. We are not going to make to the airport before our sister's aircraft lands. Our only hope is that she calls us before she picks up her rental car.

We are about half way to LA when our youngest sister's cell phone rings. It is our other sister, she has already picked up her car and is on her way to San Diego. My sister who is in the car with me is trying not to tell our other sister that Mom has died but, finally, there is no way around it. She tells her Mom died at eleven o'clock this morning. She listens for a bit and then says, "No, I promised we would try to keep Mom alive until you got here. That wasn't possible." Pause. "I know." Pause. "I know." After talking to her for a couple of more minutes my youngest sister hands the phone to me.

Our sister is very angry that she was not there when our mother died. "She promised. She promised you would keep Mom alive until I got there. She promised," my sister tells me, sounding like a heart broken eight year old child. I tell her no, she promised we would try to keep Mom alive but that wasn't possible. We had to let her go. I ask her if she wants us to meet her somewhere and she says she doesn't know and wants to hang up and call back in a few minutes. I say fine and hang up.

My brother has exited the freeway and pulled into a gas station while these conversations are going on so we wait there for our sister's call. After 20 minutes she calls back and tells me she will continue on to San Diego by herself. My youngest sister and I have been staying at our brother's apartment but it is very crowded with all of us staying there so I've decided to get a motel room for the night. I ask my sister if she would like to join me. I know she is very angry at our sister right now and may need a little time to calm down. She says yes and I tell her as soon as I find a motel I like we will call her back.

Driving back to San Diego, finding a motel, checking in, and taking a shower seems to take no time at all. My sister is knocking on the door when I step out of the bathroom. When I open the door and see her there I feel confused. How can she be her already? I just got here myself. I've noticed that since I got back from Spain my sense of time is not consistent, it seems to shrink and stretch like a rubber band. Is this part of the Camino fog I have been in since I got back?

After my sister settles in I tell her about our mother's death from the moment I first stepped into her ICU room. She is sitting very close and is watching my face intently. It is like she is trying to absorb every word I am saying deep inside her. I am uncomfortable. I feel guilty because I was there when our mother died and she was not. I feel guilty because I decided to do what my mother wanted and not try to keep her body alive until my sister got there. I love my sister and I love my mother. What has happened isn't fair.

When I was ten years old, during one of my parent's fights, my mother decided to leave my father. As she was throwing clothes into a suitcase she asked me who I wanted to stay with, her or my father. I was in agony. How? How could I pick one over the other? If I chose going with her, then I didn't love my father. If I chose to stay with my father, then I didn't love my mother. I'm feeling the same way now, like I was asked to choose who I loved the most, my mother or my sister. I know this is not true. I know that I had to respect my mother's wishes, but at the same time I feel as if I betrayed my sister. I don't tell her that I feel this way because I am afraid she thinks the same thing. I can't face that right now.

As I tell my sister about our mother's death I think I am being very calm and collected but at one point she reaches out and puts her hand on my left leg and asks, "What is this?" Until she touched me I had not realized my leg had been vibrating like a flag pole rope in a high wind. "I don't know," I answer, and as I say the words my leg stops twitching. Finally all I have left to tell is that Mom's body is in the hospital morgue and will be moved to the mortuary on Monday. Her body will be cremated some time next week. Then, both of us emotionally and physically exhausted, we crawl into our beds and fall asleep.

March 2002
Part Two

Three days later, before I can absorb what LL has told me, I return home after dining out to find a frantic message on my answering machine from my sister in Denver. She called our mother's doctor to discuss some things about our mother's treatment and he told her Mom was in a coma after being rushed to the emergency room at the hospital. By the time I get a hold of my sister again our mother has been moved to the intensive care unit and put on a ventilator. This we know is a death sentence. The ventilator is very hard on healthy lungs, what is it doing to her damaged lungs? My sister has talked to our brother and he said Mom is now conscious. He asked her if she wanted to be on a ventilator. She nodded yes. He asked her if she wanted to be on the ventilator after a week. She shook her head no.

I wait until midnight to call my sister in the Netherlands so as not to wake her in the middle of the night when she cannot do anything. She will go to her travel agent's office as soon as it opens and book a flight to California. My youngest sister and I now have to decide how to get to San Diego. We are not sure how much time we have; do we drive again or fly? We will fly; I will get the flight tickets tomorrow. A day and a half after finding out our mother is in intensive care my sister and I are in the sky and heading to San Diego.

Our sister, on her way from the Netherlands, has reached London when my youngest sister and I land in San Diego. My brother has come from the hospital to pick us up and on the drive back to the hospital my youngest sister's cell phone rings. It is our sister calling from London. She just talked to the doctor at the hospital; Mom is in a coma again. We cannot believe it, my brother was with her 30 minutes before and told her he was going to the airport to pick up "the girls." Mom nodded in understanding. Now, she is in a coma? She was doing reasonably well after they put her on the ventilator, just a little frightened by what was happening to her, but well considering what had happened. We thought we had more time.

Only two people are allowed in the ICU at one time and my brother takes me in first. My mother's bed is surrounded my medical equipment. She has a ventilator, heart monitor, a brain wave monitor, various IV's, and a dialysis machine. There is also a machine that controls the amount of medication she is receiving and a machine that sends heated air into the special mattress she is laying on. This is attached to the end of the bed. I inch my way around all this until I am standing beside her. I reach out and put my hand on her arm and burst into tears. I lay my head on her belly and sob, "Oh, Mom."

The instant I touched her I knew she was no longer here. She is not dead but the "her" part of her is gone. Gone somewhere deep inside her brain and I don't think she can come back. After a bit I stop crying and my brother and I leave so our sister can come in. When I see my sister-in-law outside the ICU I blurt out, "She not there anymore." My sister-in-law gets a panicked look on her face and I realize she thinks my mother has died and her body moved somewhere else. I say, "No, no, she's not there anymore." Her face registers understanding and she reaches out and pulls me into a hug.

I wait in the hall with my sister-in-law until my brother and our youngest sister come out. My sister is handling this better than I am. She had her emotional breakdown when she made the phone call to the doctor the other night. Our brother is handling our mother dying the best because he had a better understanding of how badly our mother was doing. My sister and I are now both in the same place, understanding Mom is dying but shell-shocked at the same time.

This is surreal in a way my walk wasn't. Everything that happened on the walk I accepted as if it was normal while it was happening. Dreams are like that, it's not until you wake up the next morning and think about them that you see that what seemed normal to you in your dream was actually strange. But this, my mother dying, makes me feel like I am in the middle of a dream about a car accident. I've stepped on the brakes but the car keeps sliding toward a tree. I want the slide to stop. I'm saying, "Wait, wait, don't let this happen." But, just as there is nothing I can do to keep the car from hitting the tree, there is nothing I do can stop my mother from dying and this frightens me.

I though I understood about death. I always felt sorry for other people when they lost someone close to them. I thought I knew what they were feeling but I see now I had no clue about what they were really going through. I know people die every day but this is my Mom. I know mothers die every day but this is my mother. This is the only person who can truthfully say she has known me all my life. This is the only person that I can truthfully say I have known all my life. This is my Mom. When she dies where do I belong? When she dies who am I? When she dies my life changes and can never be the same again. I am no longer someone's daughter.

After a restless night, my brother, sister, and I, drive back to the hospital. We are walking from the parking lot to the front door of the hospital when my brother's cell phone starts ringing. It is the ICU telling my brother that our mother has crashed again and we should get back to the hospital as quickly as possible. He says we are at the front doors of the hospital and on our way up. When we reach the ICU we all walk in and straight to our mother's room. I know things are going badly because no one tries to stop us. Her doctor is there and he tells us Mom almost died last night and then again just a few minutes ago. Keeping her here was getting harder and harder. The next time they would have to use "heroic measures"- doctor talk for opening her chest to get her heart started. We should think about what needs to be done next.

My mother always told me she did not want to be kept alive by machines and that if we let the doctors take heroic measures to keep her alive, she would haunt us after she died. I tell my brother and sister I think we should let her go. My brother agrees but our yougest sister had promised our other sister that we would try to keep Mom alive until she got to San Diego. I say Mom is trying to leave us and we keep letting the doctors pull her back. We should let her go, she never wanted to die while hooked up to machines. My sister still wants to try to wait until our other sister gets here. I tell her if it is down to doing what our sister wants and what Mom wants, I have to do what Mom wants; which is not to let her die on the machines. My sister finally agrees to let her go.

We ask that all the equipment that can be removed from the room be removed. While they do this we wait in the hall. After they are finished we return to the room and find Mom hooked up to only the ventilator and the heart monitor. The room seems twice as large with all the other equipment out of it. The nurse removes the ventilator and then leaves the room. My sister walks over to the right side of our mother and takes her hand. I walk over to the left side of her and take her other hand. My brother stands next to me and puts his hand on her leg. We are surprised to see how strong she is breathing off the ventilator. We talk to her and tell her it is OK to leave. We tell her we love her. We thank her for being our mother. We watch her breathing as it slowly gets shallower and shallower. We listen as the silence in between her breaths get longer and longer. We alternate between watching our mother and watching the heart monitor as the sharp spikes recording her heartbeats get weaker and weaker and slower and slower on their march across the monitor's screen.

Then something amazing happens as her heartbeat slows even more and her breathing stops. I feel her presence floating above and behind my left shoulder between my brother and me. It is the same sensation I have when someone behind me invades my personal space by standing to close. At first I think someone is standing behind me and I turn to look at them, wondering what they are doing there. Then I realize it is my mother's spirit and , without thinking, I glance up at the ceiling over her bed. Goodby, Mom. I then turn back to my mother and then look over at the monitor. Her heartbeat has dropped to only two or three weak blips on the screen at a time. Then there is only one and after that nothing, just a straight line. I relax and feel my brother and sister do the same thing. It is over. Then, in the middle of the screen, one unexpected spike and a very strong, " BEEP". We laugh and I say, "Very funny, Mom."

The nurse has been watching another monitor outside the room and he rushes in when he hears us laugh. We explain what happened and he explains that this last strong blip happens sometime but we know it was our mother say, "Gotch ya!" The nurse turns off the monitor and says quietly that we have made the right decision. He has a 96 year old man at the other end of the unit who is in the same condition our mother was in but his wife cannot let him go. That poor woman. We go out in the hall and thank all the nurses who helped take care of our mother. I look at my mother's body lying there in her room and feel guilty about leaving her. I think I am deserting her but at the same time I know that she is no longer in her body, so how can I be deserting her?

I am surprised by how I am feeling. I feel sad but also very peaceful. I thought I would be afraid to watch my mother die but it has turned out to be the most spiritual experience I have every gone through. Thank you, Mom. Thank you for the honor of being with you at the end.

March 2002

My mother is now in a nursing home. She was transferred there from the hospital after another lung infection. I talk to her in the emergency room and she tells me they are sending her to the nursing home because she needs around the clock care until they get her back problem fixed. I ask her how she and my brother are doing. She says that when she first got to the emergency room she fell asleep and then woke up to find my brother holding her hand in one of his hands. He was patting it gently with his other hand while quietly saying, "Mama, Mama."

I get a lump in my throat. My brother has been so angry with our mother that he had been calling her by her first name as a way of distancing himself from her. I tell her it sounds like they are getting along better. She agrees and says it is because his attitude has changed. I smile because my brother had told me that she was the one whose attitude had changed. I am relieved to hear they are closer.

I finally send the film from my walk out to get developed and have picked up the prints. When I look at them I am surprised by how looking at each one puts me right back on the Camino I can remember where and when each picture was taken. Seeing them also has me asking myself, "Isn't this where......?" Although there is still a lot I do not remember, these pictures help bring back some memories. Maybe my trip is not totally gone.

On the weekend before St. Patrick's Day I drive into Denver and go to the Psychic Fair with my sister. There I sign up for another reading with her spiritual counselor. After I sit down LL looks at me for about ten seconds and then carefully asks me how I am doing. I stare back at her for another ten seconds before answering and then blurt out, "I walked the Camino."

She is impressed by this and asks how it was. I'm not sure how to answer and I fumble around before saying it was a dream. She smiles and says this dream feeling is called "Brigadoon" and that doing the walk was a dream for me, a spiritual dream. She says that I am no longer the same person I was before I made the walk and then asks me how I would like to integrate this spiritual dream into my Post-Camino life. I say I don't know; I only know that I want to stop feeling like I have been ripped in two. She says that in some way the walk had exploded me into spirituality and I am trying to fit myself into my old life and that this I can no longer do. She says that by going to Spain I had stepped out of my life and into another world and this had changed me.

She then asks if I took any pictures during my walk and I say yes. Did I bring them? Yes. As she goes through them I tell her stories about them. When we get to the picture of the Virgin Mary I tell her how the statute was struck by lightning. She looks at me and says she was struck by lightning once. My life is full of coincidences. Why should another one surprise me? We look at the rest of the pictures and then she goes back to the picture of the Virgin Mary. She examines it and then asks if I touched the statute. I am stunned. I forgot until this moment. I did touch it. I answer, "Yes! How did you know?"
She looks at me with a twinkle in her eye and say, "I'm psychic."
I laugh, "Oh yea, I forgot."

She looks at the picture one more time and then puts it down and look at me. She starts talking again. She says that, for me, the walk was easier that I thought it was going to be. Not physically but emotionally. She says that I am to watch birds and to watch the eagles. That the old me did the first half of the walk and the new me did the second half. That my aura shows that I went through a near death experience during the second half of the walk. The suffering of my body and my feet caused part of my brain to check out at that point because it was the only way I could do the last partof the walk. That I should write about the trip from the time I left home until I returned. That I am more empathic than I realize. Someone who is empathic can pick up other people's feelings. That I went into this experience naive and wide open psychically and, without realizing it, when I touched the statue I was hit by spiritual lightning. Then later when I touched the Tree of Jesse it wasn't just me touching the marble but me touching thousands and thousands of other people. And when I touched those people I also touched on their illness. That I could also become ill myself. That she was going to help show me how to heal my aura. That I went to "the highest of the highest of the high." That I touched "the highest of the highest of the high." That she has a vision of me standing by the statute, touching it and then having the spiritual lightning hit me. That this is what caused me to have my "near life experience." She then smiles and says that was a Freudian slip, she meant to say near death experience. That I am going to be given and known by another name. The last thing LL tells me is how to do the ritual that will help heal my aura.

I listen to every word with a growing sense of wonder. By the end I feel the same way I did as a child seeing my first lighted Christmas tree. What she says comforts me and frightens me at the same time. Later, when I leave the fair, I feel overwhelmed. My perceptions about myself and where I belong in the world have been shattered. What am I suppose to do now?

February 2002

On Valentine's Day two of my sisters and I are speeding across the desert of eastern Utah laughing uproariously. I am laughing so hard my stomach and face muscles hurt. We are playing a game called, "Do You Want To______ Or ______, With Mom?" In this game we each take turns filling in the blanks in the question. My youngest sister asks, "Do you want to ride all the way to New York in the back of a pick-up truck during a snow storm or ride in the cab for 20 minutes, with Mom?" We roar with laughter. I gaze at the stark scenery around us and ask, "Do you want to live in a shack out here in the middle of nowhere without electricity, heat, or water, or live in a mansion, with Mom?" More raucous laughter. We are driving from Denver to San Diego non-stop because of our mother and we are angry at her because of it. We are also afraid she is going to die before we get there.

Our mother has been chronically ill for the last ten years with emphysema and heart disease. About a year ago we tried to persuade her to move from the small town she lived in, up the Hudson River from New York City, to San Diego. My sister was leaving New York which meant no one would be close enough to help her if anything went wrong. At the same time she found out the house she had been renting was being sold and this helped her to decide to go. Our brother lives in San Diego and he agreed to help take care of her when she got there. Plus we were sure that the climate in San Diego would be better for her. Her health at the time was not very good. She was in a wheelchair because she could not walk more than a few steps at a time, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day, she was using a nebulizer four times a day, and she was having problems with allergies that would literally take her breath away.

So, Mom agreed to move and did better physically after she got there. After six months she was walking unassisted, up to two blocks at a time while pushing her wheelchair, which she used as a cart to carry her oxygen bottle. She no longer had to use a nebulizer, and her doctor had told her to try breathing without oxygen when she was sitting for a couple of hours a day.

The problem was that although Mom was doing better physically, by this time she and my brother's relationship had deteriorated to the point that neither one could talk to the other without it ending up in a fight. When my mother first got to San Diego she stayed with my brother and his wife. lt was to be for about a week or two until the brand new assisted living housing apartments that my mother was going to live in were finished. After two months the apartments were still not finished and my brother and mother were speaking to each other as little as possible.

My brother did not understand how sick our mother was when she first came out and did not handle the pressure of having a mother who ended up in the hospital every week or two for breathing problems very well. My mother did not help by reacting to any attempt to help her as it was an intrusion. She has never been able to ask for help because, for her, asking for help was being weak and my mother could never appear weak. Accepting help now would be admitting that she needed help, and needing help meant she was weak. The pressure was relieved a little when they found another assisted living complex for Mom to live in, but by then their relationship was damaged so much that neither on of them would take the small steps that could help to heal it.

Now our mother's health is failing again. The steroids she takes to help her breath are also damaging her body. At the beginning the steroids did more good than harm but now that ratio is reversing. A couple of weeks ago she had a vertebra in her lower back collapse and instead of calling my brother to take her to the doctor she tried to take care of it over the phone. Then she had to go into the hospital because of an infection in one of her lungs and she waited until it was almost to late to call for help. When she got back home she refused help from my brother and my sister-in-law. My brother snapped and called us (his sisters) and said we better come out and do something about Mom because he was through with her. He also said he was afraid she was dying.

So, my sister flew into Denver from the Netherlands, I drove in from Kansas, and she, I, and our younger sister climbed into my car and started driving to California. We are driving because we cannot all afford to fly and we are doing it in one day because of time limits. My youngest sister has to be back to work by Tuesday of next week.

The drive isn't too bad. We each take a two hour shift driving and then we rotate from driver's seat to front passenger seat to backseat and then back to driver's seat. While we travel we talk. At first we talk about Mom and all the sins of omission she made raising us. During this discussion my youngest sister says something that stuns the other two of us. She tells us Mom used to hug her and cuddle her all the time when she was little. We cannot believe it, she hardly ever hugged us and she never cuddled with us when we were little.

We think about this piece of information. Maybe by the time our sister was born our mother no longer felt overwhelmed by being a mother. She had her first three children spaced a year and a half apart. She spent almost five years with at least one child in diapers. Her fourth child came when the one before was three years old. Then she had a breathing space of five years before her next baby was born. So, at one point she had five children under the age of eleven. Two years after her fifth child she was pregnant with her last baby, who was stillborn in her sixth month of pregnancy. After that she no longer could have children. Maybe that was why she hugged and cuddled our youngest sister. Maybe losing her last baby and not being able to have another made my sister all that more special.

We settle into our drive, rotating every two hours. Once, when I am in the passenger's seat and starting at the road before us, I see what seems to be a man sitting by the side of the road. He is so far ahead that I can barely make him out. He looks like he is sitting with his knees drawn up under his chin and his head resting on his knees. As we speed closer, the shape that I mistook for a man changes and I see that I am looking at is some kind of large bird. Then we are close enough that I can tell it is a Golden Eagle. He is on the ground about five feet away from the road and just sits there watching us approach. As we pass him I turn my head and watch him as he turns his head to watch us rush by. I cannot believe what I've seen and ask my sister who is driving, "Did you see that?"
"What?"
"That Golden Eagle sitting by the side of the road."
"No."
"You didn't see him?"
"No."
I cannot believe she did not see him.

We reach San Diego around two o'clock the next morning and check into a motel. After a few hours of sleep we drive to my mother's building and take the elevator up to her floor and knock on her apartment door. When we get inside I am shocked by her condition. She is lying in bed on her side and looks so much older compared to the last time I saw her. She also looks like a child laying there and I have this crazy thought that she is shrinking and that pretty soon she will just disappear. The apartment is a mess, with stuff piled everywhere and dust covering all surfaces. Any anger I have disappears and I quickly walk into the bathroom so she will not see me cry. I am crying because my mother is so very ill and I am crying because, even now, my mother has not let other people help her.

We spend the next two days cleaning our mother's apartment, getting her to eat, doing her laundry, trying to lift her spirits, and just being nice to her. One day my youngest sister and I take our mother to her doctor's appointment and while we are gone our other sister uses that time to change and wash her bedding and to move the bed and clean around it. She also washes the window next to he bed so our mother can see out. Our brother meets us at the doctor's office and our mother agrees to let the doctor answer any questions my brother has about her illness. We feel this will help him to handle this better and relive some of the pressure he has put on himself.

After the doctor's appointment I take my mother out for lunch. On thing that is hard for her is being cooped up in her apartment, not being able to get out of bed. We go to Red Lobster and my mother is so hunger we order a bowl of soup for her as we wait in the bar for a table. Ten minutes after we are shown to our table my mother tells me she is in pain, cannot do this anymore, and wants to go home. When I get her home her bed is ready for her and my sister and I help her change into her bed clothes and put her to bed.

We feel we have accomplished a lot. We have cleaned her apartment , got her to eat, so she is feeling better, lifted her spirits, and done all her laundry. My younger sister has also talked to our brother about his part in this mess and lets him know he is not alone. She tells him that anytime Mom gets to him to call one of us and not to yell at Mom. He agrees to do this.

The only thing left to do is to talk to Mom about what is happening between her and our brother. My youngest sister decides to do this part so, I and my other sister go out into the hall while she talks to our mother. After a while she come out and says she thinks Mom has seen the light. She started out by asking Mom why she did not call our brother when her vertebra cracked. Mom answered that "hell would freeze over before she was going to call him."
My sister answered, "Guess what, Mom? For you it almost did."

Then she went through each one of Mom's complaints about our brother, one by one, and came up with a solution for each one of them. Most of the problems came from lack of communication or miscommunication on her and my brother's part. She also tells Mom that she has to let people help her and to be nicer to the people who were trying to help her. Mom agrees to everything.

On Sunday we leave and head back to Denver. This time we will stop overnight half way home. Again we talk about Mom while we drive. We know that she will not be with us much longer. The doctor told us any infection she gets from now on could kill her. We all think she has three to six months to live. What are we going to do without her?

The Rest Of November 2001 Through January 2002

These are days of pain. I cannot believe how much agony I am in. Physically my body is in poor shape. My feet are trashed so badly that I can only wear sandals and not shoes. I now walk with in an old people's gait and bent over, still trying to counterbalance the weight of the backpack I no longer carry. My sister says that when I move around I look exactly like that old man character Tim Conway played on The Carol Burnett Show. By the end of January the toenails on both my baby toes fall off. People who see me are shocked by the amount of weight I have lost. I figure I've lost around 12-15 pounds (about the weight of my pack) and since I normally weigh about 127 pounds, this is a lot for me.

Mentally I feel like I have been ripped in two. My body is here but my mind is still on the Camino. Sometimes when I walk to the post office to pick up the mail I find I have been walking the Camino the whole distance. How to explain this. What I see in my mind is more real than where I am right now. It is like watching a movie on a big screen, after a while you forget the theater, the seat you are sitting in, and the people around you.

I do not want to talk about my walk and am actually angry when people ask about it. At first it is because I think people are trying to do the walk vicariously through me. With my Post-Camino Shuffle people who do not know I did the walk will ask what happened to me; why am I walking like I hurt? I say I am walking this way because I spent a month walking across Spain. Some people's eyes light up as they ask me what it was like. I politely reply, "Fine", while my eyes are saying, "I f***ing dare you to ask me more". Other people, when they find out I walked across Spain, are silent for a couple of seconds and I see the unasked question, "Why?" in their eyes before they ask what it was like. I politely reply, "Fine", while my eyes are saying, "I f****ing dare you to ask me more".

Later it is because I am losing the walk. It always had a dream quality to it and now all that is left are dream fragments. My memories of the walk are fading like a favorite blouse thrown in the wash too many times. When I read the notes I wrote on the walk I don't know what some of them are about. All I remember are some of the people and the rhythm of walking each day. Funny, this should be very upsetting but it is not. Not remembering takes the pressure off having to talk to people about it. Since this is something I cannot do anyway, having no memory of the walk is a blessing.

November 1st- 5th, 2001

I spend the first three days of November resting at my sister's house and on the fourth day my brother-in-law drives me to the airport in Brussels for my flight home. His seven year old daughter comes with us, and about two hours into the trip we start eating the sandwiches my sister made for us. This is when I find out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are considered very strange by the children of Holland. My sister made PB&J and plain jelly sandwiches and when I pass one sandwich back to my niece I do not look to see what kind of sandwich it is. When she bites into it she makes a sound of disgust and begins explaining to her father that she got a PB&J sandwich. I find a jelly sandwich and trade sandwiches with her. When she hands me her sandwich I take a big bite out of it and say, "Hummm, hummm, hummm," while chewing. She laughs so I offered her another bite but she pushes it away while laughing even more. Who knew a peanut butter and jelly sandwich could be considered exotic?

The flight home is psychologically excruciating. Time seems to have slowed down and seconds are like hours. The walk was shorter than this flight. When I reach Denver I walk to the baggage claim area where my husband is waiting for me. As with my sister, I don't "see" him until he says hello and again I feel nothing and stare at him as if he is a stranger. Even when I hug him I feel nothing. We are staying at my youngest sister's house for the night and the drive there helps me get over this disconnected feeling I have. It is good to be almost home.

The next day we make the three-hour drive to our house and those three hours are worse than the airplane trip. It seems as if the drive will never end. My body aches. My mind aches. I feel trapped in the car. The closer we get to home the more agony I am in. The last mile is almost unbearable. Then we reach the turn-off into town and the pain recedes and I feel calmer. As we pull up to our house I feel a great sense of relief. Finally, this trip is really over. I remember what B said about spending six weeks on the couch after she walked the Appalachian Trail. I think I will do the same thing.

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles

Stay with me. The journey isn't over. What's happened since I got back from Spain is as incredible as what happened on the Camino walk.