1,000

It started out as a simple thought, a fleeting idea that passed across his theatre stage of a mind as quickly as a shooting star across a galaxy, and yet the memory of it would not fade. And so these many weeks on he found himself on a boat far away from home heading for a land he had long since left.

They say the memory of a thing dilutes with age, somehow time mixing up the ingredients of fact and imagination and producing a whole new memory that is not quite what occurred. Not so for this old man as each wave that the ferry hits causes his old bones to moan with the pain of age.

Ben had last been to Andros 50 years earlier when his world had seemed endless and his possibilities open to every conceivable choice. He had not been alone. She had been with him. She, ah she, the very thought of her destroying him over and over again. Time has taught him to let her go, to place her into a secret place in his mind that he knew she was safe but away from him. To let her out was to render him motionless.

They had gone to Andros on the recommendation of a Greek friend, a casual comment that their month in Greece would be more memorable for the visit to this overlooked beauty. And so in a moment of youthful headiness, they had bravely chartered a boat, Ben's allowance from his father more than handsome to cover this and indeed the whole Greek trip that was meant to then settle him down to a life of family business service. They had sailed from the busy Athens port with huge smiles on their faces, not sure what they would find or how long they would stay.

As Ben's ferry sailed easily across the Aegean Sea he thought back to a crossing many years earlier in the other direction that had been accompanied by woe and desolation. He had lost her, his Josephine and nothing would ever replace her.

They had walked onto the island in the middle of the swinging 60's to find a life that had not changed for centuries. The young couple already lost in each other, now became lost in the island with the historic beauty of the towns and villages met by the greenery of the island. Andros was blessed with Mediterranean blues and the unique greens of chestnut, walnut, sycamore, oak, weeping willows, poplar, mulberry, osier and olive trees, fields of thyme, crocus and sage. It was a journey for the senses that saw Ben and Josephine mix their sensual pleasures with a beautified island of extraordinary delights.

Two days became two weeks and Ben's father became concerned with messages of increasing urgency to cut short the European trip that had meant to be for a month and was now way past two. 'Just two more weeks,' Ben has successfully pleaded with his father and mission accomplished from a call box in Chora he had almost skipped back up to their room with a view at the top of the capital to find Josephine retired to bed with an oncoming fever. The next day she had become worse and a doctor was called for who examined and shook his head saying all was not well. Indeed it was not. By the next day they were losing her and the doctor was joined by a colleague who confirmed an immediate return to an Athens hospital was needed.

Josephine, slipping in and out of sleep, asked Ben to carry her outside to take in the view across the ocean and whilst she did not say 'for one last time' the young man felt the strain of it all as he lifted her light frame and rested her on a bed of cushions and blankets on the terrace outside which was shaded by a rooftop of green. Here they held hands and whispered their love. Here their memories would linger forever.

Josephine never made it to an Athens hospital. Her heart gave way as her body closed down to an unexplained and inexplicable illness that attacked her body and killed her. Ben, devastation leaving him devoid of all hope, returned home to never be the same again.

Years passed, as they must, and one by one his parents, his older brother and his two closest friends all died until one day he found himself alone on a park bench shaded by an ash tree waiting for nothing at all. And then in a moment of pure bliss he had noticed a young couple completely intoxicated with one another and, as their love became his sole attention, a gentle breeze had blown and the sun broke through the leaves of the tree to warm his face. It was then at that moment that he suddenly felt so connected inexplicably to Josephine again and he knew what he must do.

And now here he was, stepping out into the ancient capital again and beginning to climb the well worn steps to where he last held his beloved. Up he climbed, each step more painful than the last as old age bit cruelly into his tired bones. The sun now high and causing sweat to trickle down Ben's shoulders as he forced himself onwards until finally he arrived to a sight he had dared not think of for so long. Before him the terrace and there still the ancient branches that protected her then and still remembered her now and as Ben fell to his knees, exhaustion washing through his pain in gulps of grief, he counted himself so lucky to have once again climbed the thousand steps to his beloved.


A thousand blips. Thankyou for sharing them.

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