I was deeply moved.
No one ever expects or is prepared to hear a dearly loved one tell you on the phone, thousands of miles away, that they had only a short period to live. How horrible!, How Insane! This is the central part of the story that Laurence Carter tells in his 2024 book “FROM GRIEF TO LOVE. WALKING AROUND ENGLAND AND WALES”.
Laurence is an English World Bank transport economist who meets a young English lady, Melitta Alevropoulos in Lilongwe, Malawi in 1987. After an amazing courtship, they marry two years later, and in a very loving and caring marriage, have three children Emily, Nic, and Georgie. Their careers take them to live in Botswana, Malawi and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), and the remote island of St. Helena until they moved to Washington D.C. in 1993. In October 2012, Melitta receives a diagnosis of cervical cancer. Laurence was on a business trip aka World Bank “mission” in East Timor when Melitta call to tell him that the cancer had metastasized and she had 12-18 months left. She survived for 20 months and died in September 2015 at 53 years of age. How devastating! How acutely sad!
In the aftermath of this personal tragedy, Laurence decides to establish Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, one of the world’s only charities dedicated solely to eliminating cervical cancer. Unlike most cancers, cervical cancer is caused by the human papilloma virus (HOV). The WHO has called for the elimination by 2030. In the spring of 2017, Laurence comes up with the idea of walking around England and Wales to raise awareness about preventing cervical cancer by promoting screening.
The 2,800 miles long English coast path and the 870 miles coast path of Wales would take walking about 10 miles a day for a year. Only 100-150 people had done this before. Laurence’s intended walk is named “3500 to End It” and it would be clockwise starting and ending in Seaford on England’s south coast. The approach for a one-year walk was to buy a camper van for logistics. He would park the camper at the place where he would start his planned walk for the day, then take a bus or train back to the camper van and drive to an Airbnb to sleep.
Laurence recalls that once the Walk was announced and that he would take a year off from work to do this, he was given a lot of emotional support, advice, and well wising from his colleagues. One man who saddled up to him in the cafeteria and predicted that he would be affected by the people he met along the way for “a goulash of influences”. “Cafeteria Man” was correct and telling of the stories reminded me of The Canterbury Tales and its 30 pilgrims storytellers including Chaucer.
Carter’s “pilgrims” are memorable and include “Tim the Toast”, the multi-millionaire; the eighty-two-year-old woman walking the South West Coast Path with one kidney; Helen, one of Melitta’s closest friends who stayed with her in August 2015 before she passed in September 2015; Mindy, whose crooked fiancé robbed her and disappeared; and both divorced Caroline and Pete, owners of the Airbnb who met through online dating; 70-year-old Ruth, whose husband left after 12 years of marriage, but continues online dating; Heike, a Black Croatian doctor who is a bodybuilder; Rebecca, who booked a room for both of them for three days on assumptions; Ruth, whose two husbands had both run off with women who were 25 year younger than they were; Bert the taxi driver who found love on a dating app in Thailand; and the librarian who had sent him an email from Bethesda suggesting they go for a walk on the Canal when he returned from his Walk.
There were those “pilgrims” that shared innermost pain and acted. There was Alan who lost his twenty-two-year-old son to alcohol; Sara, whose sister died of cervical cancer; Dee Cartledge whose son had died of “flesh eating disease or necrotising fasciitis” and had set up the Lee Spark NF Foundation; and Simon of Hull who restored old houses and fountains.
As I concluded reading this heartbreaking and yet inspiring book, I wondered about Laurence’s use of the term “traipsing”. I saw a man full of intent, passion, determination and accomplishment. Nothing that he had done in the past, during this walk around England and Wales was needless, unnecessary, and without reason. He accomplished a lot; achieved the goal and raised global interest and awareness of an unnecessary killer of women- cervical cancer and the failures of screening; he finished an epic journey, something accomplished by few people; and he WROTE A BOOK. His take aways of listening and asking the right questions; learning to love; and what can you do now for the one you love, are profound.
Alas, I wanted to know more about Laurence.
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KEYWORDS cervical cancer, love, screening, walking
