I heard the mobile ring in my pocket and pulled over to the side of the road to take it. When I saw it was my mum calling I knew what it was. The news we all knew was coming. She was gone. Nearly ten years of suffering, operation after operation, the diabetes, the wounds that wouldn't heal, finally it was over. If I had gone to Goa for Christmas I'd have met her one last time, but it wasn't to be. On the phone couple of weeks ago all she kept saying was that she was praying for me. That's what grandmothers do most I guess - pray.

I couldn't hold back the tears, right there on the road. Did she have a good life I wondered? It was a tough life, that's for sure. Those were the days when girls were married off at 18 or 20, and had to make the best of the future that was on offer. There were very few choices. Given that I'd say she had a better life than many others.

Death and suffering is something I always find myself running away from. I know I would have gone for the funeral had it not come at such a bad time. But it's like one of the guys from the office in Zuerich said to me - for things such as these there's never a good time.

Memories keep flooding in ... things she used to say to us when we were kids, the way she could understand everything we said in English without being able to speak a word of the language herself, and of course all those summer holidays in the big house up on the hill that was built brick by brick. It won't be the same without her when we go back there next month, my brother and I, but we must go back. Not so much to relive the memories as to say thank you.

like two sparrows in a hurricane
trying to find their way
the world says they'll never make it
but love says they will