After we'd said hello and chatted, after we'd all had biscuits and talked about our family, after we'd said goodbye and kissed and hugged and got in the car, it began to rain in tiny little drops.

Nan stood at the bottom of the lane and waved us off, big sweeping motions that you could see all the way to the end, and I waved back at her, sticking my arm out of the car like I did when I was little.

And like when I was little, I watched in the wing mirror as she got smaller and smaller, then turned and went in. I sat for a minute, quiet.

'Well, that was nice.' Said my dad, and I agreed. We drove down the lanes that made up the map of my childhood, and I thought.

Always, it seems that I must wait and wave as I watch my nan, my nana, fade away, until she is nothing, until she is gone, and I cannot do a thing about it.