Death has been present recently, peeking over my shoulder, almost like it wants to remind me that this is the time of year when many cultures pause to remember their dead. The past several months have included two close losses, and on the Day of the Dead, I want to take a moment to praise those who have joined the circle of ancestors. One, a fellow pilgrim on the Camino; the other, an Uncle who spent his life serving his community.
First, Ronny Green, aka Uncle Ronny. He was the uncle I secretly enjoyed most (shhh), and I’ve just returned from his funeral. His life can best be summed up by the testament in his obituary and the tribute written by his friend and colleague John Hammett.
Tribute by John Hammett
We lost not only a dear family friend, but a true legend in the EMS community, Ronny Green.
Ronny was more than just a leader. He was the father of EMS in York County. His dedication, leadership, and passion helped build the foundation of emergency medical services in our community, leaving a legacy that will live on for generations.
But Ronny was more than the father of EMS in York County. He was a father figure to the countless EMS crews he raised, mentored, supported, and supervised throughout the years. He helped shape careers, build confidence, and turn young EMTs and paramedics into the professionals they became. He stood behind his crews, believed in them, and treated them like family.
Ronny didn’t just build an EMS system; he built an EMS family. Legends aren’t measured by the titles they hold, but by the lives they touch, the people they inspire and the legacy they leave being. By that measure, Ronny Green was truly a legend.
Our hearts go out to Ronny’s family, friends, and the generations of EMS professionals who were fortunate enough to serve alongside him.
Rest easy, Ronny. Your shift is over, but the legacy will forever remain on duty.
Rest in peace, my friend. You will never be forgotten.
Uncle Ronny loved well, always had a joke at the ready, and held his faith close. Others knew him as a visionary who laid the foundation of emergency medical services where he lived; I just knew him as Uncle. He joins my circle of ancestors.
This post originally started to honor MaddyChristine, before the departure of Uncle Ronny. Maddy was a close friend and the first person to step onto the road of pilgrimage with me. We met over a decade ago when I was working as a foster care and adoption social worker. She and her husband Tim contacted my agency as they desired to provide a home to a teen and his brother in need of a permanent home. I was assigned to work with them from home study to adoption. Maddy and Tim crafted the most honest home study of any couple I ever worked with. Faced with deeply personal and sometimes intrusive questions, most couples put on a brave face and try to project happiness and competence. Maddy and Tim shared the broken places in their lives and how it prepared them to love these teens. There was a sense that these two people were special and that their honesty was a treasure. We worked together for years, from home study to adoption, to second adoption, and the journey of post-adoption joys and heartaches. Then we lost touch.
When I stepped onto the road of pilgrimage for the first time, I had made a conscious decision not to share pictures and stories on social media so that I could be present for what the journey had for me. After being on the trail for a while, and feeling quite lonely, I shared a picture on Instagram more for my own sake than anything else. Maddy responded quickly with the note that when I returned, to please reach out; that she had been feeling the call to pilgrimage as well. Out of this came a beautiful friendship and a rekindling of a relationship with both Maddy and Tim. We connected over our spiritual pasts and what we sensed emerging in our present. Maddy was giving up a career in TV production to become a spiritual director, and I was beginning to step away from the nonprofit fundraising space. We both felt the call to walk with others on pilgrimage and sensed that the act of pilgrimage was a radical thing to do in a time hell-bent on speed and disconnection.
Pilgrim Venture was originally intended to be built with Maddy. We longed to help people see the relationship they could have with themselves, the Divine, those around them, and remember their place in the connectedness of the living world. After two years of leading walks on the Camino together, we were ready to launch our joint venture, rather than have separate practices. We began meeting and dreaming up names and ideas (I still love the name Wild Pilgrims, alas, already taken), routes to walk, how to craft offerings where we lived, what pilgrim spirituality might look like as a way of life. And then one day I received a message from her that she had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given perhaps a year to live.
Maddy was a singular person with a huge, warm, vivacious, and infectious love of this world and the people in it. She was fierce in her advocacy for her children and never shied away from speaking the truth. At first, I thought her truth-telling was a result of her being Dutch and an immigrant...I would learn later that her honesty came from the heart level rather than just the directness of the Dutch. Her words could sting at times – they were armor-piercing bullets, yet they were always intended as an invitation to pursue wholeness and love. Her way of being was painstakingly earned through years of trauma recovery and her belief that her medicine for the world would come from her broken places. It is nearly impossible to put into words the force of her personality. She would dive into the depths of the soul and talk about God, and then she would stand and dance and party like someone who felt freedom in her depths.
It is tempting, after someone dies, to have only wonderful things to say about them, and I often wonder if it is fair. We are human after all, are we not? I wish at my funeral/wake that people share what they love while making room for all my failings and shortcomings. Maddy and I had plenty of shortcomings together, and both had misgivings about whether we were well suited to work together to build a pilgrimage practice. We swapped hours of voice notes in WhatsApp filled with dreams, ideas, and disagreements. In the last year of her life, Maddy selected a small group of intimate companions to journey with her through the end of her pilgrimage. Her dying process was intentional - she helped to weave her burial basket for a green internment, planned every detail of how she would be cared for in her final days, and then turned her attention to living.
In August, only a month before her death, Maddy’s friends threw her a birthday party. Each of us was invited to share a special memory or what Maddy meant to us. I thought for a long time about how to put into words what her friendship, in both the good and bad times, had meant to me. As we sat around the table at her birthday party with a group of neighbors and friends, I recognized that the greatest gift she had given to me was her honesty. Her own deep sharing let you know you did not need to hide. And in turn, she called to the places in you that wanted to hide. To the areas you wanted to turn away from. And she would ask you to look at them and be with them. As a spiritual director, she gave space for you to be present, rather than asking you to fix anything. To listen for where God (in whatever way you understood God) might be living in the midst of your everyday.
Maddy left this world on September 28, 2026, surrounded by family and friends as she had chosen. Her pilgrimage of life was remarkable and messy and human. And above all, honest. She leaves behind a family grieving. Yet a family who intimately knows that they are loved and that have received a love few experience. The kind of love that is fierce and never lets go. That shows up when you don't want it to. That isn't quite convenient when it tells you that it is time to heal a wound because it is affecting those around you. The tenacious never-give-up-in-the-hard-moments kind of love. The kind of love that costs a lot to give to others. Yet Maddy knew that giving such love would always refill her own well, and so she poured it out endlessly.
I will never forget the day we walked into Santiago de Compostela together for the first time, both overwhelmed at the gift of journeying and caring for others on the pilgrim road. It was a tender moment with tears and hugs. The last time we sat in Santiago together, we marveled at the power of the place. We watched as pilgrims staggered into the Plaza del Boradoiro, the plaza in front of the great cathedral, and hugged and cried at the end of their journey. It never gets old sitting in the Plaza, watching as pilgrims reach the end of their pilgrimage (or so they think). Maddy would go on to say that she felt most at home on the road, walking with other pilgrims, her feet firmly planted on the earth she loved, and her attention fixed on what wanted to be spoken to her.
A few months ago, I flew out to California to participate in a wilderness vigil/fasting rite of passage in the desert. While all rites like this include ritual elements of enacting death, dying, and rebirth, this rite asked those participating to face the idea of our death head-on. To gaze right at it and ask how we would choose to face it. For twenty-four hours on our vigil, we were asked to live in the liminal space on the other side of death. To have metaphorically died and to stay there. Many rites leave you there overnight before a rebirth at sunrise. We were asked to live in the space for a day and find out what emerged and whom we might offer ceremony for. While in that space, I picked up my rattle and walked to a creosote bush that had become a companion. A faux burning bush in the desert that I danced around for days. I held a simple ceremony for Maddy, welcoming her to the space on the other side of life. And I left her a message in preparation for her passing- letting her know that all was well here in this space, and that the transition was not as daunting as we envisioned. I rattled, sang, danced, and offered words of welcome. I don't know if she received that message when she transitioned, but I hope the echoes of that ceremony found her.
So – for the moment, I wish to offer praise to our dead. My dead. The imperfect dead who sit among the cloud of ancestors. The Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, Halloween, Samhain, whatever, helps me to remember those who have come before and to offer up thanks and praise. To Uncle Ronny and MaddyChristine: you are loved and missed. Thank you for your gifts. To them, I add others whose lives have touched my own: Kate, Dorothy, George, Paul, Gladys, and a host too numerous to name. Thank you for the gifts of your lives. I praise my dead for opening their arms wide to love imperfectly and giving that life to others. To all those who have completed their earthly pilgrimage, I pause and remember you today.
