Day 38 - September 28: dedicated to an old, supportive friend who is celebrating a birthday today...

the same age I celebrated 12 days ago. Happy Birthday CVF!  I hope it is a special day for you and that there will be a Camino in your future.  I await your "proposal" when I get home to Canada!

On the 37th day, Nancy and Joanne rested..... NOT! We did sleep in until 8:30.  Incroyable!  We didn't have to put our boots on, but we did walk. We went sightseeing, shopping and generally did the turista thing.  Santiago is a beautiful city. Our little choochoo train tour near sunset, was wonderful.  I understood about 80% of what the bilingual tour guide said in Spanish, and 30% of what she said in ENGLISH.  Honest!

Nancy spent so much time helping this Italian named Jack (what Italian is called Jack?) back on the terrace of our pension, with his damn phone.  It was just too comical listening to him chatter on in Italian about his problems, have him ask Nancy "Capische?" and Nancy answer "NO!" Nancy has yet to meet someone she doesn't want to help.  She was ever so patient, and persisted in helping him until she had solved some of his problems, like a phone full of junk taking up all his memory.  He even came looking for her, when she had gone for a nap, but I told him nicely, when he started exclaiming that he couldn't catch Wifi, and kept moving his chair around the terrace, to "Sientate y tranquilo", a mix of Italian and Spanish I think.  He wasn't getting any sympathy or help from me.  LOL

Today was extra special. We attended the English mass in a small chapel in the Cathedral.  There were a lot of Irish there. The priest Father Joe was from County Cork, Ireland, and was officiating.  We were around 100 people.  I volunteered to do the first reading, seeing as I am so shy!  At the beginning of Mass, we all introduced ourselves and said where we were from, and what we had done on the Camino.  The communion hymns were " Here I am Lord" and "The Psalm from St. Francis of Assisi."  Well, that's when I started crying again. A young American whom I had met the night before, put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

I think I am beginning to realize that my Camino is over, and I don't want it to be over.  I just want to put my backpack back on, get Vimy over here on the next flight, pick up my stick and keep hiking, to Finisterre, and then what?  I have to go home, but right now it is with a heavy heart.

Let me leave you with a few more thoughts on my Camino. Did I tell you about the American woman
who arrived at Rabanal, near the Cruz de Fero, not feeling well? At the pharmacy, they gave her some pills and sent her on her way.  She signed in at the Albergue, where the volunteer at reception, the hospitalero, was a physician from London, England. He told she was a sick woman, and sent her in a taxi, to Astorga, the town with the nearest major hospital. She was having a heart attack.  She survived, and this year, three years later, came back to that same Albergue, where the volunteer was once again there, to thank him personally for saving her life. An awesome and true story!

I am humbled by how many compliments and notes of congratulations I have received. I feel totally undeserving. I may be determined and stubborn, but I am NOT courageous.  True courage is shown every day on the Camino, by paraplegiacs being wheeled by a loving family member; by a mother and her sons, donkey and dog, tenting; by a son leading his blind father, for the second year in a row; by Birgit who stomped around our albergue one night, on the stumps of her knees, radiating life and vitality, in spite of physical limitations that we would all find debilitating. THOSE are courageous people and there are thousands of them out there.

We start winging our way home to New Brunswick and Michigan tonight, starting with a flight to Madrid.

I hope to blog back in Canada on a few subjects like the food in Spain; how to budget on the Camino; as well as wrap up a few stories I did not have time to tell.  I will be posting today's pictures. As well, I hope to do a reflective piece on what the Camino has meant to me.  This was my personal diary, and not just a blog.  I was more than happy to share my journey with all of you, from old, dear friends, to people I didn't know at all, to my Grade 7 teacher, to friends of friends, and of course, to my family and extended family.  Many of you kept me going, with your ongoing show of support, especially on those difficult days when  I thought I had reached the end of my rope.  How blessed I have been in my life and how I continue to be blesssed!

Signing off for the last time from Santiago de Compostella, Spain, on a sunny Monday, with love, gratitude, and humility.

Joanne