Home is where the heart is.

Right now, my heart aches being so far away from home. It's funny, while I was visiting my family last week, I barely cried. Oh, yes, I had a couple of moments where I felt teary or even let a little sob out, but nothing I am known and loved for... The big sob out session.

Since getting back to Devon, things have been feeling weird. Not things really, more me, I, myself, inside... tears have been rising to the surface a lot more than usual. I have gone back to my routine: work, studies, even dating, but somehow all this is being tainted by a much more important feeling I cannot shake: I am loosing my very much loved grand-mother. And so, Wednesday night, I cried. I cried like I haven't done in a long time.

I cried for the emotional pain she's going through, I cried for her fears and her hurry at leaving us. I cried for my granddad and his stress and enormous sadness. I cried for my mum, who's going through one of the toughest moments of her life, no matter how natural and inevitable it might be. I cried for my aunt who's trying to manage this difficult time and the big changes happening in her personal life. I cried for my great-aunt who worries so much about her brother and what might happen once his wife has passed on.

Finally, I cried for me, for the pain I feel at the unequivocal certainty that this is the end of the road for this chapter in my life. I'll never get to cook with her anymore. I'll never get to bug her by speaking into her pans while she's cooking. I'll never get to walk with her, looking for conkers and chestnut in the winter. I'll never get to show her where I live and what England is like. And I might never get to kiss and hug her again.

See, I talked to my mum on Wednesday and the news aren't good. So, after a few tears, it got me thinking some more. We don't realise how precious those moments are until they are about to be taken away from you. We get so carried away with our little lives, we get on with things and somehow, we tend to forget that we're only just passing through, some for longer than others, but in the end, we will leave behind loved ones and it isn't going to be easy for either of us. It is not surprising then, that when the day comes, we get shaken back into the sheer reality of our own mortality. We know it's coming, we talk about it every now and then, we even discuss our funeral plans with friends, we talk about the music we'd like to be played then, what people should say, or wear, we joke about what might be after, and sometimes, we mentioned how we'd like to go. Mostly pain free and in our sleep... But we don't often discuss the hardest options of our demise. Illness, accident, violence... so much can get in the way of our very existence.

But in the end, whether people stay or go, whether we tell them how much we love them, whether we see them everyday or just talk to them a couple of times a month, on thing remains for sure: Home is where our heart is.