What makes someone wallk 12,000 miles? And does it matter? For me the journey began when I was just seven years old. That was when I first discovered what it meant to lose something precious. I was just seven when my Mum left my Dad. For three weeks Mum was gone and my brother and I stayed at my Nan's house. I remember walking through the cold autumn leaves, on a rainy day, on the way to school, and looking at the colours: reds, yellows, oranges- beautiful, but sad in that they would all too soon shrivel up and turn to the brown of dust, in a matter of days, or perhaps weeks. On the radio at my Nan's house I remember hearing about war in the Middle East, where people were dying. On the television I remember a program about whales being killed, in Iceland or Japan, for their blubber or oil. Fragments of memory are all that are left to remind me of just what happened.
By October of 1973 my brother and I moved into a new house with my Mum and new 'stepdad', Frank. On my eighth birthday I had a birthday party with my childhood friends at the new house, but that was the last time I saw those friends. I started a new school. Only two miles away from where we had lived before, I may as well have been in a different world. I had been introduced to loss and grief. My former life had gone.
One of the things that mattered most to me was the loss of the place we had called 'The Jungle'. This was a small area of wasteland behind the house where I had been born, at 48 Church Lane. To me that wasteland was home: its trees, grass, brambles and the animals that lived there were part of my world, part of who I was. Shortly after my parents divorced, 'The Jungle' was cleared to make a parking lot for imported Japanese cars. 'They paved paradise and put up a parking lot': Joni Mitchell's words echoed the loss that I felt, as the place where I had played, and started to grow up, was destroyed... gone forever.
Eleven years passed, with some happy times and some sad times. My world became one of books and stories. There I could find something more than a small house in a small town. In stories of adventure whole new worlds would open up. In the 1980's I started long distance running and then long distance walking to help disabled people and the MacMilan Cancer Support Charity.
For me the walking was a way to reconnect with the world, a way to see just what was out there, a way to feel alive. For me, too, I had no real home. What had been my home had been bulldozed and ripped apart.
In my genes I was nomadic: never more happy than when I was in a new place, meeting new people, doing new things. And yet, through it all, my Mum was the one constant: the person who had fed me, taken care of me, taught me... the one person you could always talk to or just have a cup of tea with.
In 1994 I married my wife, Monica, and by 1996 our son, James, was born. We moved to be close to my Mum, so that James could get to know her. Mum 'baby-sat' for James and did a lot with him. It was good seeing the two of them together: good seeing them both happy.
And then came 2003, when James was almost seven. I was now an old man of 37. My Mum had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The illness showed itself as jaundice, because the cancer had blocked Mum's bile duct. The plan was that a 'small operation' would be carried out to insert a metal tube, or 'stent' into the bile duct, to allow bile to flow and stop the jaundice. In discussions about the operation there was no indication that there was serious risk from the operation itself. At the same time, though, we did know that the cancer was advanced and inoperable and that there was only a matter of months left for Mum to live.
The operation went ahead. It happened on a Tuesday, early in the afternoon. That Tuesday evening I got a call to say that the operation had not gone well and that we should go to the hospital. It turned out that Mum had problems with her blood clotting, and the operation had led to a lot of internal bleeding. The call came as a shock, in that we had hoped the operation would help. We were told that Mum might not survive the night.
Expecting the worst, my brother John and I, my stepfather, Frank, and sister, Marie, all went to the hospital, to be with Mum. The doctors had inserted an intravenous drip, which was essentially keeping Mum alive, as they couldn't stop the internal bleeding.
What followed was over a week of visits to the hospital. There was a room where we could get some sleep, but we tried to make sure there was someone with Mum at all times.
Initially Mum seemed to be getting better. She was conscious and able to talk. With the intravenous drip in her arm it was hard for her to eat food. I remember spoon feeding some cornflakes to her, and making her some cups of tea in a little kitchen close to the ward. It felt strange to be feeding Mum, but I was glad there was something I could do.
In the ward there was an elderly woman with dementia, who would cry out at night. After a day or so, this woman was moved out of the ward, and we were all greatly relieved.
The nurses in the hospital were wonderful, but it wasn't the best place to be. I had worked in a hospital as an orderly and had never liked hospitals after that.
After several days we had a talk with a doctor, who was on duty. It was explained to us that the intravenous drip was the only thing keeping Mum alive, but that the internal bleeding would not stop and it was only a matter of time. I don't remember who made the decision for the drip to be taken out, but that was the decision that was made. All we could do now was try to encourage Mum to drink as much as possible.
The next few days were hard, as we watched Mum fade away. She slept more and more. I remember sitting by her bedside in the middle of the night, just listening to her breathe: hoping for another breath, but not sure if it would come.
The night Mum passed away I was asleep in the small room close to the hospital ward, but my sister Marie was by Mum's side. In the early hours of the morning we all gathered by the bedside to say our last goodbye.
The overall feeling on that morning was one of shock. My Mum was only 59 when she died. I had hoped she would see her grandson James grow up, even hoped she would see James have children. Mum's passing brought home how brief a life could be. If losing friends and my first home had been bad, losing Mum was so much worse. The one true constant in my life was now gone. My heart felt as if it had been ripped out. Nothing was certain. Nothing was reliable any more.
In talking to Mum in the last few days we hadn't said goodbye. We hadn't talked to her about the fact that she only had days or hours left to live. Amongst ourselves we hadn't even talked that much. The operation had brought her life to an end much sooner than we had anticipated. None of us were prepared for what happened.
The worst part for me was lack of control: I wanted to be able to change things or make things better, but nothing I could do would change what had happened. Powerless... useless, that was how I felt, and, at the back of my mind, or sometimes not even at the back, came the thought that one day the same thing could happen to me.
Dazed, shoked, angry, feeling guilty, but not knowing what I was guilty of... and grieving: I needed to do something, I needed to escape and, most of all, I needed to feel alive.
