This is my first post on WP and it is dedicated to the lasting memory of my eldest sister Niki. Niki was killed in a car crash in Egypt ten years ago today.This is Niki holding me in her arms outside my father’s clinic in Cyprus.

At my birth, she was a mature 11 years older then me. My parents were busy professionals and I can say that while the extended family was everywhere in our growing lives, it is Niki who took me under her wing and held my hand as I was growing. She opened my eyes to the world around me whether it was stopping to look at a flower in nature or finding a shell on the sand. As I grew, that influence became more substantial in forming who I am. She introduced me to literature and art. She excelled in both. She encouraged discussions and discourse with openness and humour. She loved to cook and always included me in her lunches and dinners with many writers and artists who visited her home, a haven of calm, a garden of scented citrus, her house decorated with antiques and art work from all her travels, as well as her own.

She wrote, she painted, she created. She saw the good in everything and everyone – to the point of fault sometimes but we always laughed about that. She foretold her own death in her writing which to this day chills me as she was lost to this life and to us too soon.

I know that in remembering her especially today, it is one of many days when she is there by my side, as she was when I was little, showing me the way.