No Place Like ... Home ..!!!

She stood there, looking over the high wrought iron gates, at the dead of night. After all, this was the moment she had waited for, for all those years. But, now when it had finally arrived, she could not put together herself towards it.
In all those years, when she had wanted to come back, it dawned on her her, that she had never exactly thought about the moment itself.

She was finally home, returned to the place she had had a family. It was here she would have grown up, completed her education, spent every school holiday..., ... how she missed those vacations ... Christmas Eve's, mother laying out a big Feast, relatives and cousins flowing in, with Father reading out stories to them at night - by the fire in the living room, good night kisses from the mother ... ... ...

How many times she had wanted them to be by her side ... on the completion of her school, on the day she graduated, it would have been her mother who would have selected her wedding dress, how happy she would have been to see her grand-children growing up, getting married.

The life she had lost, had hardly ever seemed so real to her, just as at this moment when she knew, she was about to see the place, where it had all been taken away from her.

She slipped a hand and pushed open the rusted gate. There was a frozen moment, finally she breathed out and took a step further. The hedge had grown wild in the forty years, since she had been saved from the flaming house and taken away by her uncle. Most of the Bungalow was still standing amongst the waist high grass. The attic and the top floors had totally been destroyed by the fire.

She stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck that once had been ... ... Home ...!