‘The only journey is the one within.’
Rainer Maria Rilke
On my last day here among the Lotus Eaters at La Jenny, I’ve taken myself to the beach. I have a makeshift picnic with me, leftovers and some bread, and a bottle of wine. It’s good to breath the sea air and today the weather is exhilarating. There are waves maybe a metre high crashing onto the foreshore.
Nature in all its glory gives human worries and woes some scale. When my concerns are pitched against the elemental, when the weather has some fierce quality, as it does today, I often feel that I am calmer inside. Why that should be, I don’t know.
As I pull my knees up and stare out at the ocean, I’m thinking about home. There’s a few good reasons why. I spoke to my sister yesterday, and though she did her best to hide her fears, she said mum is obviously deteriorating. There was a choking incident, brought on by masked banana and custard, which has never caused a problem before now. And our mother is sleeping more and more, up to sixteen hours a day.
When I probed, it was clear there had been a marked deterioration in the weeks I’ve been away, and my sister, in trying to be brave, was feeling the strain and had to hold back tears. And I’m not there, and that’s not right.
And I’m thinking about my video chat with Lilly as I sit on my sarong in the middle of miles of sand stretching to left and right, and thousands of miles of ocean are just beyond the long, straight horizon.
‘There’s something I want to say to you, I said to her, something I should have made clear a long time ago.’
‘You remember back in the day when we seemed to be forever heading up to London at dawn for yet another appointment with the professor, or a scan, or an X-ray? God knows how often we made that trip, all through lockdowns too, with masks on, hand sanitizer?’
‘I do, though it seems like it happened to someone else now, not me,’ she said, ‘or not the me I am today.’
‘And do you remember how I used to joke with you in the car that it was all mum’s fault? She gave you the dodgy knees and the hips, willed them to you in her genes.’
‘Yeah, well, I may be innocent on joints, but on the demons, the self-doubt, the stuff that keeps you awake at night my love? It seems they’re exclusively my gift to you. Because I get those feeling too. I got the demons from my dad, and you got them from me. I would wish it different, but I can’t change who we are. What I can do is tell you not that I’m just sorry, but that I think I get it. I have a glimmer of understanding about what you’ve been through these last months, and how brave you’ve been, how hard you’ve tried to overcome fear. You’re not alone, that’s what I want you to know. None of this living business is easy, for anyone, and we all need a break. This is mine, and Greece will be yours. We’ll make it happen, I promise love.’
And it’s not only my sister, my mother and Lilly. I miss Megs hugely, Lilly’s elder sister. She’ll be head down and working hard, no doubt, but I’m sure she could use a walk and a talk together, just the two of us, as much as I could. When I don’t get to see her,  I feel bereft, like a part of me is missing. And then there’s Phil. He texted soon after I spoke to Lilly and I tried to call him, but there was no reply. It seems he has a date for the operation. His sisters are flying in from the UK and his brother-in-law is standing by to do what he can to support him. But a time will come soon enough when the surgery is over and the family have gone home, and the long process of recovery begins to drag. That’s where I come in, maybe only a month or two from now.
The draw of home, be it real or my vision of the future,