An Easter sojourn on Patmos, Greece ...

My adventure begins on Patmos courtesy of my mother having lived on this Eastern Greek island for 35 years, much loved by the locals even now, six years after her death. The most consistent comment I've received on this trip: "Oh, you look so much like your mother!"

We're here to make peace with her bones, my younger sister Sally and brother John, accompanied by his woman friend and artist, Tina. We retrieve her skeletal remains (from the priest) in a close-fitting, handmade wooden box in which most of them were placed after her body spent the obligatory time in a concrete vault in the church cemetery. We take turns to spend time alone with the bones and say our final goodbyes. How many people get to do that?! I feel complete and grateful.

It's the first time my brother and sister and I have taken a holiday together since we were children. We're here in Spring partly because it's our mother's birthday anniversary and partly because of the flowers. Red poppies, purple gladioli (wild ones) yellow and cream-tipped daisies, dark pink convolvulus, aromatic herbs and other varieties decorate the fields and hillsides… At night their beauty is replaced by a panoply of glittering stars in the dark sky.

Our champion here is Vangeli, an old friend of our mother's and a hard working father, brother, husband and grandfather who can be seen working the fields below the house every day with his brother. Their father, who lived to 96, built the thick-walled traditional home in which we're staying and Vangeli grew up here. In exchange for interpreting for the British woman who now leases it from Vangeli, my sister has been gifted two weeks' vacation at the house. John and Tina are staying in the house my mother rented for 30 years across the valley, also for free. 

Vangeli comes by regularly with generous gifts for us from his fields and wouldn't think of taking money. He risked his car chassis on a rough road to get us up here from the port and has always been the generous benefactor when any of our family are on the island.

Generosity runs in the Greek blood. When I missed the bus home after a major food shopping expedition, I was quickly offered a ride by Lefteris who had overheard my request for a taxi. Conversing with him (with the aid of his older son who had learnt English), I discover that Lefteris' mother was a friend of my mother's. On our way back, a bowl of young goat entrails sloshes about in the trunk, in preparation for the traditional Easter meal, kokoretsi.

At midnight on Easter Saturday, orthodox Greeks break their lent-long meatless fast and celebrate Christ's resurrection with feasting and fireworks. They greet each other with "Christ is Risen!" "Indeed He is Risen!" comes the reply and they wish each other a long life, "Chronia Pola!" along with fireworks and gunpowder. These greetings ring across fields and valleys for the next few days, and the young men continue to light gunpowder packets or sometimes dynamite in an apparent contest to find out who can make the most satisfying noise. It can be quite startling ...


On Easter Sunday, as we sit at lunch on a terrace overlooking the valley and the blue sea, strains of haunting local music begin to curl up from the beach taverna and fill the air all afternoon. A lazy few hours bathing in eastern harmonies and warm sunshine turns into an evening with the local community dancing in the square. It hasn't all been sunny, though; the weather has been changeable: stormy wind and driving rain as often as sun.

On the Monday after Easter we're collecting drinking water from the communal spigot when we notice the local priest with acolytes bearing icons calling on various homes and businesses; the priest waves a posy of local herbs dipped in Holy Water as a blessing and offers ritual prayers at each stop.

Several times a day a sudden musical clamour arises in the valley as the goats, penned at the top of the mountain opposite, are released to pasture. Their bells are tuned for harmony and there's no sound to equal it. The goatherd once told us that his goats prefer the sound of "old" bells to new ones that can frighten them with their inferior sound.


Other sounds that charm: an unexpected peal of bells (in the monastery town of Hora at lunchtime, donkeys braying, the now familiar sound of a chicken who has laid an egg and the encouragement of her sisters, and a little owl outside my window one night. On one of our expeditions we spot one of these little owls looking at us from a drainpipe in the wall before shuffling backwards to hide.

The gifting continues when we face a long wait on the island of Kos on our way home. As we were inquiring about busses, a young man offers to take us to the small seaside resort he is driving to, where we while away our time watching an ingenious young family prepare their store for the imminent tourist onslaught: imagine a young woman hoisted atop a pallet, painting her balconies the signature Greek blue with brothers, husband, father below her taking care of other tasks. The popularity of the Greek islands with international tourists ensures that, so far, they have fared far better economically than the mainland.


The lovely pictures are mostly thanks to my sister Sally with her expert eye and an amazing phone/camera.