Scattering my father’s ashes in Santiago de Compostela

We are in the holy city of Santiago de Compostela to scatter our father’s ashes. He and my youngest sister had planned to walk the Camino, which finishes here at the resting place of Saint James, to mark the start of her adulthood and the beginning of his retirement. Instead, my two sisters have been walking the ancient pilgrims’ route for the past few weeks. I’ve flown into the city to meet them at the end. Most of Dad’s ashes went into a smart Regency tea caddy. The funeral directors had offered us a standard-issue urn but we decided he’d prefer something jolly and Georgian. The lacquered box didn’t quite hold all of his remains so the youngest put the rest in a Tupperware tub and brought him here to Spain. She took a relaxed approach to paperwork and I worried that his ashes might end up in a drug-testing laboratory.

People here seem to cry quite openly. In the square beneath the cathedral, a man of about 60 sits on the paving stones, leaning back on his palms and gasping between tears. We watch a father at the end of his pilgrimage surprised by the arrival of his daughter, his shoulders breaking into shudders of joy. I feel a little silly in trainers, surrounded by pilgrims in walking boots. My sisters have bumped into friends they’ve met along the route, sharing stories of lost rucksacks and hostels filled with mad Germans. They went straight into the cathedral when they arrived, while I waited outside. It didn’t feel right to go in. I’m here because our father isn’t, at the end of a journey I haven’t taken.