Purple Flowers

It's been a rough week, and I've spent a lot of it feeling sorry for myself. Twisting my ankle ... the lousy walk into Burgos ... Missy leaving ... the fiery misery that is shin splints ... a nagging blister ... just not having fun due to constant focus on my physical ailments ... running into the ALS biking team ... and the impending first anniversary of my husband's death.

The reason I gave that first night in Borda for why I'm doing the Camino was that I'm at a point of redefining my life. A few of the current crew knew from subsequent conversations that Jerry had died, but no details or timing. On Thursday Annette caught a glimpse of my FU ALS tattoo while I was wearing my hiking dress, so I told them the story and that Friday was the first anniversary. It's why I chose the monastery for that night -- I didn't want to wake up on Friday in a bunk room with 24 random strangers. It was already the culmination of a lot of crappiness.

Instead I woke up Friday in a lovely place to some lovely messages from friends at home and from Yvonne and Annette. Tom gave me a big hug the first town we crossed paths. Mim and Kathy made a point later to go to the bar so I could have our shared room to myself during our scheduled family call. I was really touched that they remembered not only that I said we were doing that but the time.

When I left the monastery Friday morning and started walking I cried a lot. I had a lot of conversations, in my head and out loud. The sun came up and it felt right to be hiking on that day, even though the Camino is for me, not for him.

And I started seeing purple flowers everywhere. Purple was Jerry's favorite color. I'd seen purple flowers before, probably every day, but not the proliferation or the swaths laced in the fields, the sheer dominance of purple rather than red poppies, yellow bushes, or white clusters. Maybe I just had reason to notice. They made me happy.

It was a hard day, but it wasn't a bad day in the way I had expected it to be. I didn't have to work to find the good because it was finding me.Read more