We had hiked almost 30 miles that day. We had been on the Camino de Santiago for a month. Everything on my body was either tired or non-functioning.
We stopped at a hostel-slash-bar in a fleck-on-the-map town. For supper it was “pinchos” which is the Spanish word for tiny, stale, rock-hard sandwiches which have been sitting on the café counter since before your birth.
We sat at the bar with other pilgrims, drinking tepid beer, eating in silence. Too tired to talk.
Seated beside me was an elderly pilgrim who seemingly had energy to converse. His beard was white. His skin was shoe leather. His odor was ripe. He looked like a cross between Moses and a Hobbit.
He had a heavy French accent. The left half of his face was paralyzed. There was a string of rosary beads dangling from his pocket.
He told us this was his seventh Camino. He said he first hiked the Camino after he died.
“Died?” said a priest who was sitting at the bar.
“Oui,” said the old
man.
At first, we weren’t sure we heard him correctly.
The young priest adjusted his glasses and took a long look at the old man. I could tell what the priest was thinking. I was thinking the same. The old man LOOKED plenty alive. And he definitely smelled alive.
The old man went on to tell a story. When he was in his 40s, he died for several minutes. He said he was on the toilet, of all things. He had a stroke. He collapsed. And thus began an ethereal experience that changed him.
“What happened?” the priest asked.
The the old man said he exited his body, floating high above it. He watched paramedics stuff his body into a bodybag.
After that, a glowing woman appeared. She was made of light. She whisked him away into a world of whiteness.
“Whiteness?” the priest asked.
…