I lost my father to heart disease in 2007. A few days prior to this, I had left the country on a family vacation but returned as soon as I learned how dire his situation was. In fact, when I learned that he’d died, in the middle of the night, at home, surrounded by my mother and brother and sister, I was a mere two hours away on the interstate driving in hopes of making it in time. I did not.
In the weeks that followed, seeking still some closure and perhaps a little absolution for being the only one not present when he took his last breath, I often visited my mother and the house she shared with him. There, I would wander around like some ill-informed ghost hunter, looking over the things he had owned, the projects and hobbies and such with which he spent his time: books, tools, containers, cartons of things he’d collected in his seventy-six years.
Hola, just a short hello from the Camino de Santiago. We are, as of this morning, on day nine of thirteen and while our time as pilgrims has been nothing short of amazing—hard and sometimes easy, dry and sometimes wet, uphill and downhill, thought provoking and mind-numbing, already whenever
“We have two lives. The second begins the day we realize that we have only one.” – Confucius
A few days from now, Franca and I will begin walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. For anyone not familiar (here’s an entertaining film you’ve probably already seen about it)