After years spent building businesses, chasing dreams and dealing with her husband Jack’s cancer diagnosis, Kirsten McHugh realized they were running out of time for something they had once taken for granted: The time they had left together.
They had lived a life many would envy. They restored historic buildings, planted a tea plantation on the New South Wales South Coast in Australia, created an award-winning artisan cheese business and pursued a series of adventures fueled by curiosity, ambition and possibility.
“I was looking for a partner in crime,” she says. “And there he was. A co-conspirator. A co-adventurer. A secret. A boast.”
When they met, Jack was a brilliant barrister, adventurer and larger-than-life personality whose wit, intelligence and appetite for life captivated Kirsten.
‘A WHIRLWIND’
“I fell in love with a whirlwind,” according to McHugh. “A dynamo. A sunburst. A lightning strike. A dervish. A man of great appetites for all the things that bring savour to life – food, poetry, love, travel, conviviality and companionship.”
But somewhere along the way, the very dreams they had built together began consuming the relationship they were meant to serve.
“We busied ourselves and buried ourselves and worked ourselves until only gossamer strands of our first love held us together,” she says.
Then cancer arrived.
Nine years into their marriage, Jack was diagnosed with Stage 4 Carcinoma and Kirsten was forced to confront a possibility she had spent years avoiding: the future they had always assumed would be there might not be guaranteed after all.
“We needed to get out of this while we were both still alive,” she says.
Haunted by the question of how much time they might have left together, Kirsten became obsessed with another question:
How do you outwalk the Angel of Death?
A second cancer diagnosis in 2017 served as another reminder that the future could not be taken for granted.
We busied ourselves and buried ourselves and worked ourselves until only gossamer strands of our first love held us together.
“Not necessarily life-threatening, but serious enough to require surgery and rehab, and to remind us that the Angel of Death, having sidled so close seven years earlier, had never really been banished,” she says.
Born into a long line of walkers, Kirsten turned instinctively to walking.
Determined not to waste the years they still had together, the pair set off on an 800-kilometer pilgrimage across northern Spain along the Camino de Santiago.
“I found myself obsessively and desperately willing one last journey through a storied landscape,” she says. “Never quite daring to hope that we might get to the Camino. Together.”
Kirsten hoped the journey would give them something they had not experienced in years:
Time.
Time to walk.
Time to talk.
Time to think.
Time to reconnect.
And above all, time to remember what mattered.
“I wanted to put myself back together, if that was possible, and reclaim my love and my marriage,” she says.
“Seekers, Sinners & Me: Walking, Love and Gratitude” is the story that emerged from that journey: A memoir about love, mortality, gratitude and what matters when time can no longer be taken for granted.
I found myself obsessively and desperately willing one last journey through a storied landscape.
Filled with humor, eccentric fellow pilgrims and hard-won wisdom, it follows Kirsten and Jack across 800 kilometers of northern Spain as they attempt to reconnect with each other while Jack still had his strength.
‘PRECIOUS GIFT’
“To have Jack determinedly walking with me was his precious gift,” she says. “I had heard other pilgrims talking of the transformative powers of the Camino. God knows, I could do with some transformation, but I didn’t dare hope for anything so fancy. All I cared about was having this chance to reconnect with my beloved Jack.”
Along the way, Kirsten discovers that the Camino is not simply a physical journey.
“On the Camino I finally stopped all the frenetic activity and recognized how bent out of shape I was, how warped my perspective had become,” she says. “At last, I could see and name all the demons chasing me. I feel as though the Camino has given me the chance to re-engage with life in a less frantic way.”
After six weeks and 799 kilometers on foot, Jack and Kirsten completed their pilgrimage.
All I cared about was having this chance to reconnect with my beloved Jack.
For Kirsten, the Camino became a journey of gratitude.
“It was a journey of thanksgiving,” she says. “After a death-defying health roller coaster, despite goading, challenging and collaborating with each other through building and business projects, the man I love was striding beside me into Santiago this Saturday morning.”
Back home in Australia, life gradually settled into a familiar rhythm and the couple returned to the life they had built together.
But the reprieve was short-lived.
In 2018, Jack’s health began to deteriorate once again.
“It’s the worst possible news,” she says. “Jack’s voice was distant and unemotional, his bad-news-delivering voice: ‘It’s bloody cancer.'”
What followed was another grueling battle with the disease, one that would ultimately claim Jack’s life in 2021.
After his death, Kirsten began writing the story of the adventure that became one of the greatest gifts of their life together.
“In the midst of the deepest sorrow and the most agonizing loss, I never stop being grateful for the time we spent together walking those 799 kilometers across Spain.”
As she writes in the book’s closing pages:
My touchstone is always to think of him, strong in his favourite hiking boots, smiling for my camera as we clattered over the early morning cobblestones.
After all this walking, “Seekers, Sinners & Me: Walking, Love and Gratitude” is a story about finally learning to stop running.
McHugh”s memoir is available wherever you buy your books, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon (e-book) and Booktopia.
