Photo Credit: Phil’s Camino

In the late evening hours and under the lamplight of a waxing crescent moon last Sunday evening, a man named Phil Volker walked the final steps of this life’s Camino and crossed the gates into that heavenly Santiago, which he understood to be the end of all this earthly trudging and drudgery. His pilgrim’s passport was officially full of stamps.

But death is not the true entryway into Phil’s story. What defined Phil was not his death (which loomed large this past decade as he journeyed with Stage IV cancer), but rather, what he chose to make of his life. Even in his last days, he could be heard saying, “Don’t fear dying. Fear not living every moment to its fullest.”

Last Saturday, Phil was the man of the hour for a Zoom gathering that attracted about 100 people. His pilgrim name was Felipe and he had an entourage of fans the world over. He was kind of a big deal. Those of us who joined in on the call were blessed to see how he held court with humility, humor, and superhuman strength.

He was busy making plans for November 10, which marks the 100 year anniversary of the Marine Corps. We all held high hopes that he would make it to November. He had already kept death at bay for so long but a handful of months ago, he opted to forego further cancer treatments and seek in-home hospice care. He expressed a wish at that time to live out his remaining months as a Civil War general in his field outpost tent might: with a kind of stoic peace that he had played this Great Game called life to the very best of his abilities.

And why not don the hat of General? Heck, he’d already worn so many hats in life – from dedicated Marine veteran to gentleman farmer and cornfield tender, to beloved father and dedicated husband, to custom woodworker to cancer walker to Camino pilgrim, tapas aficionado, and staunch Seahawks fan, to most recently, his late life role as General. He was thrilled to be able to play host to friends from around the world who traveled to his home on Vashon Island to see him in late August for a living tribute event called “The Oasis.”

My connection to Phil began in fall of 2015. I was asked by a friend in New Zealand, Grace Bower, if I could deliver some colorful, knitted prayer shawls she had made for a few peeps in and around the Puget Sound, including author Terry Hershey and his island neighbor Phil Volker, who had first been diagnosed with cancer in 2011.

I managed to get the shawls to Terry not long after and that’s when I began learning more about Phil and his blog, Caminoheads, his intrepid Camino journey in the summer of 2014, and how he had created his own Camino loop on his ten-acre property on Vashon as a way to bring the Camino home to his own backyard. His amazing story inspired filmmaker Annie O’Neil to make a documentary called Phil’s Camino about his courageous walk with life and cancer.

In the fall of 2017, as I was finishing up an e-book about communal grief rituals, I decided to include a map and condensed tale of Phil’s Camino in it as an example of how walking can be a healing modality for communal grief work.

Photo Credit: Phil’s Camino

Phil and I didn’t become Facebook friends until January of 2018 but not long after, we began to form a friendship through the window of poetry. I would post poems that would inspire him, we would trade thoughts on life, the universe + everything; and slowly, we began to strike up an epistolary friendship through FB Messenger. I would periodically inquire about the walking schedule he had posted for his backyard Phil’s Camino but alas, to this date, I’ve yet to make the trip to Vashon, which is a short drive and ferry ride away. Prophetically, my first visit to his land shall indeed be a grief walk.

We wouldn’t actually meet until the following December, when he was back to doing treatments at Swedish Cancer Institute on First Hill in Seattle. Meeting him IRL was like greeting a long, lost friend. I had brought along my new John O’Donohue book, Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World, which lent us inspiration to talk about the big conundrums in life, the important stuff. You could say that we were members of a mutual admiration club. He admired my work as a funeral celebrant and death educator, as well as my Advent-ish writings and my spiritual poetry curations, which he would sometimes post on his blog or share on Facebook.  

I, in turn, was enamored with his incredible gift for inspiring teams of medical practitioners, cancer survivors, and fellow caminoheads around the world with his wit, his wisdom, and his courage.

He would tease me, wondering if I just lounged around all day being a poetry commando. I wondered the same about his cancer survivor presence at Swedish – it was clear from all the oncology nurses who came to greet him that he was the cat’s meow of chemo patients and well-loved by many. And instantly upon meeting him, I could see why.

Phil’s great gift to the world was his generosity of spirit and his uncommon ability to be so fiercely and lovingly in the moment with you. You felt seen, heard, and celebrated in his presence. I loved him for his deep and abiding faith which I find beautifully expressed in these words he shared with me near to Winter Equinox (his birthday) a few years ago:

“At the edge of the glass in the window I see the small branches move
and I know there is a creature that I can’t see but must exist just beyond.”

He wasn’t really talking about his Lord, but he could easily have been. In recent months, he revealed this to me:

“I am in transition and trying to claw myself up to the next level….
But my new wish and way for myself is just to enjoy things.
Everything doesn’t have to be figured out.
I have a critical mass of earth knowledge accumulated
and I need to just relax and enjoy now.”

I admired Phil for all the ways he was learning to abandon the world, as poet Linda Pastan names it, and how it was that he was able to befriend so many of us who counted him as a kindred, dearheart, and anam cara aka soul friend.

And it’s taken me a week to even enter into this tender grief and write about him. Monday morning, upon learning the news, my friend Selena (who is a Stage IV cervical cancer cervivor) and I had an early-morning chat and cry. She reminded me of Muriel Rukeyser’s words, “I am working out the language of my silence.”

And in that respect, I’ve been doing just that this week, as I’ve sat with how it is that the death of a man I briefly met just one time and shared less than two dozen private correspondences with might have impacted me so – far more than some family members even.

And as always for me, it comes down to how much that person was willing to risk their significance and live their true path with vulnerability and wholeheartedness, so that others are inspired in their wake.

Felipe was that for me and for thousands of others who were blessed to make his acquaintance, share a life with him, and help walk him home. He was a generous teacher.

Photo Credit: Phil’s Camino

Just as the the Way of St. James (the formal name for the Camino de Santiago) signifies the 500-mile pathway through northern Spain, Phil’s “Way” and living legacy continues to provide.* He was a truthteller and a way-shower who seized life’s fleeting moments with gusto. To Phil, the Camino wasn’t some foreign, been-there, done-that destination: it inhabited his heart, his days, and his spiritual outlook which was all about radical hospitality. So radical, in fact, that he even found a life hack for how to two-step with cancer these past ten years with grit, grace, and a wide smile on his face.

Buen Camino, Felipe – this poem’s for you. May we look for your directional wisdom as we might a signpost along life’s pathway, gently nudging us forward to the very center of our lives and our own true Way.

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* The saying “The Camino Provides” is a philosophy shared by pilgrims who journey to Santiago de Compostela, No matter one’s needs — be those a bed for the night, food, water, health, faith, directions, or companionship — it is believed that the Camino will deliver a solution at just the magical time.

 

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life } by Dawna Markova
I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.