I completed the pilgrimage my mother planned for herself

Dear Delyara, My mother planned for years to walk part of the Camino de Santiago after retirement. Arthritis, then cancer, prevented it. After she died, I found her route marked in a guidebook. I decided to walk it at sixty. I trained for a year, strengthened a bad knee, learned to carry less, and arranged enough time off work. Last week, I reached Santiago after 240 kilometres. I carried Mum’s old handkerchief in my backpack. At the cathedral, I did not feel she had completed the pilgrimage through me. She did not. She deserved her own feet on that road. What I felt was quieter. I had taken seriously one dream she spoke about enough times that the family had almost stopped listening. Reaching the end reminded me that hearing someone’s dream while they are alive matters too, even when life does not let them finish it.