My Friend’s Camino Gift to Me
My Friend’s Camino Gift to Me
by Leonard Vance | Tucson, AZ
It’s time for lunch, my first outing since returning from Santiago. I have a history of midday breaks with a good friend going back decades, jawing about our jobs, problems in the world, and happenings in our respective families. Our friendship has endured, growing through years of shared camping trips and hiking adventures. In 2010, we went to watch a little movie called The Way, which struck a deep chord in both of us, setting off seven long years of planning while approaching retirement, imagining the adventure while anticipating our final glorious relief from career responsibility.
When the two of us finally set off into the Pyrénées on a rainy September morning, we walked together easily, quickly acclimated, and integrated into the social network within our first days. On the tenth morning, you might imagine the shock when he woke up to say, “The Camino isn’t right for me, I’m pulling out.”
He had always been pretty much the most reliable person in my world, but after breakfast, he just climbed into a taxi and went home. Broken, I struggled to gather my scattered expectations together and walk down the hill alone on the first leg of a now-solo pilgrimage, one that would keep extending until my feet touched the ocean at Finisterre four weeks later.
Now we catch up. I talk of people we walked with, recounting stories of others he never met. Our conversation has all the ease we’ve grown accustomed to, but there are things I can’t seem to bring up, things that happened which aren’t easy to discuss, even with other pilgrims.
Paying the bill, he looks pensively off to the side and grows quiet. He then admits to chest pains in those last days before leaving. My eyes widen as understanding dawns, and there is a prolonged silence. He knows I would have followed him home, followed until he was safely back with his family, any thoughts of Camino forfeit.
I realize at that moment that my friend gifted me the Camino—all those days of joy, pain, laughter and tears, with my sense of self forever changed—the result of a selfless act, the gift of a lifetime. No thanks can ever be adequate. As we part, he asks, “You around tomorrow?”
“Yep,” I respond, “11:30 as usual?”
“Sure,” he smiles, “See you then.”
Editor’s note: Check out our review of Leonard Vance’s book: An Atheist on Pilgrimage: Tales of Humanity from the Camino de Santiago (self-published, 2024).
