A bad anniversary for my family. It is a day we remember and live again a tragic lost. A day like this, the Holy Wednesday, the Wednesday before Easter the Aegean Sea decided to take from this life my uncle, my friend, one of the men who will always keep a place in my heart.

Nicholaos Vasiliou, our darling Nikos, kidnapped from this life by the endless blue. His biggest love, the sea captured him… she captured his body but left his soul free to sail.

Nine years ago a sweet afternoon with nice weather the beautiful sea started calling Nikos with her magical voice. Her sound was the mermaid's calling. Her sound attracted him and a love desire… a desire for her salt water… her endless blue made him to take his boat and run close to her.

He lost his life after an accident, an accident that still no one knows how it happened. His boat sank in a calm sea. It sank in a small distance of the island. It is a mystery… Why this happened? How this happened? We will never learn.

We could not find his boat. The depth of the sea there is more than 150 meters.

A big operation with the help of the coast guard, the army and many islanders started at that night to find him. They found what had remained from him at the first hours of the next day… at a rockery beach. A body without life… a body without a spirit.

Nicholaos is a name that most of the families at the islands choose to give at one of their male children. That way they feel honoring the Saint Nicholaos, the protector of the sailors. Every family has members who are sailors. Some times all the males in a family works at the sea. Many islanders work at the commercial marine business, the biggest industry in this country, others in Navy and some other at the fishing job and sponge diving.

Saint Nicholas took the place of Poseidon at the hearts of the Christian Greeks. As our ancestors offered sacrifices at the sacred places, the Holly Temples of Poseidon, the Greeks at our ages build very small white churches close to the sea for Saint Nicholaos and every time that pass from one of them offered him a lighted candle and pray to him asking to protect their friends and relatives from the turbulent sea.

My uncle, Nikos, had his name but that was not enough to protect him. He was 52 years old the day that he passed away leaving all us, his family, his relatives, all island of Samos in an endless grieving.

That lost changed my family. Nothing was the same after that.

My mother, his sister, had never recovered from this grieve and she died 2 years after his death. She did not want to fight the cancer. I believe that she lost the desire for living the day she lost her brother. He was not only her brother. He was also one of her children as she was more than a mother for him. She had raised him. They had many years age difference and as their mother worked at the family's shop she had to raise him.

My grandmother, his mother, died a year after the death of her son. The family lost many members in only 2 years. My life changed. Samos will never be the same for me.

Last Sunday, as most of our Sundays, I and my aunt Yiota, his widow, went to have our coffee close to the sea. We talked for many different issues but not for him. We had him at our minds but we did not want to talk about him. We miss him a lot but we know that he is somewhere there… sailing with his small boat…

He is alive at our thoughts… He is alive inside our hearts...