Prologue
My mother died of COVID-19 on 2020-03-28 at 12:25 pm. I don’t want that to become a defining sentence in my life...but it did change everything.
I’m sorry, mama. For so many years I worked hard, trying to provide a better life for us, trying to grow in my career and enjoy my life...but one day I wanted to take you traveling, like we always dreamed about, when we were poor in my childhood. You fought so hard to keep us safe and keep me fed, educated, and growing. You were my rock, my heroine, my idol.
Time passed. The stress of our experiences in my childhood led to the development of disease and infirmity in your body and trauma in your soul. I, being young, brash, and headstrong, didn’t understand why you couldn’t just get healthy or stop being sad. I came to resent you. Over time, I started distancing myself from spending too much time with you. It was depressing.
Yet I always wanted us to be able to have a dedicated vacation, some pocket of time to reconnect. I thought that travel, something that you always loved, would be that opportunity. So I bided my time at my job, tried to save up some money and line up the perfect opportunity...and just when the moment seemed like it was finally right, COVID-19 intervened.
I wanted to take you to our ancestral homeland of Spain, since you’d always said you wanted to see it someday along with the rest of Europe. Now I find myself in a foreign country, where I don’t speak the language and have no basis in the culture, with only my wits, my savings, and your ashes. Your half-brother, who you only reconnected with on Facebook a handful of years ago and I didn’t even know existed before, has been kind enough to take me in.
I don’t know what to do with my life, mama. I know that you would want me to “move on.” I don’t need to hear hackneyed cliches to that effect from my friends, so I’ve disconnected from all of that. Everything that I was building towards ended up in shambles. I don’t wanna be that person anymore. I want to be a new person.
The whole world is in front of me. In many ways I am free, and crippled by the paradox of choice...and the guilt that I will never be able to have a storybook ending with you. In so many ways, you blessed me with confidence and courage through your parenting that I lived my life like I was a hero in an epic. I’d had so many extraordinary experiences that seem like they belong in an epic novel that it seemed like this too would transpire in a magical way. The last few days/weeks/years of your life were not good, but I believed that it was part of the build-up of the plot...instead the story was abruptly and tragically cut short.
Your brother’s daughter told me about the Camino de Santiago. She suggested it might be an awakening experience. After reading about it, I discovered that it can be used as a pilgrimage of penance. I’m not Catholic, but you were for a time, and you never stopped believing in the Holy Virgin and her Christ child. Something in my soul says this is the right thing to do. We will see Spain together, step by step. I will atone for all the ways I failed to make the ending of your life what it should’ve been--for waiting too long and doing too little, distracting myself with work and women and other indulgences. I remember you always told me you would love me Always and Forever and be with me until the End of the World. When we reach Finisterre, that promise will be kept. Vaminos.