Greetings from a peaceful woodland near the River Thames west of London

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

If I’d had my microphone with me, you’d hear the bright coloratura of willow warblers and chiffchaffs, the resonant mezzo counterpoint of blackbirds, the soft rustling of leaves in the breeze and the odd jumbo coming in to land at Heathrow — the sounds of the Thames valley and the reassuringly familiar soundtrack to my childhood summer afternoons, minus the roar of Concorde jets.

This peaceful setting is a mature woodland in the making, tucked upriver away from the fray of the capital. It is also a burial ground, where interred ashes fertilize the soil in which young oak and beech trees grow. Sitting at this bench, I have been contemplating where home is after years of living overseas — a question that many international reporters ask themselves after a beat or two.

The answer is rarely short, but it strikes me how being able to return to see family is the privilege of peace, even once they’ve passed. It is the privilege of being able to take leave of loved ones and afford them dignity. As colleagues — far braver than I am — witness how the horrors of war take many thousands of lives and deprive families of being able to mark their deaths properly, I am aware of how lucky I am to have this bench under a cathedral-like canopy of trees to which I can return again and again.

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