My grandma recently sold our family house back in Madeira and it made me unexpectedly sad.

I never spent much time there, but patchy memories of summers in the sun came flooding back when I heard the news.

We used to sit on the balcony and watch the tide come in, the sun would set and the sandcastles of the day would get washed away.

But now it felt like we were being removed from the place that we call home

and the house that stood on the shore since 1976,

was suddenly being washed away brick by brick.