In the early years of life, all children believe their home to be a central location. It's the place they go when they are scared, or when school is over and their bully will not leave them alone. It's the place where their mother and father are always around; always ready to catch them in the likely event that they fall from the monkey bars that were recently installed in their large backyard. It's the place that they are, at all times, the safest that they have ever been.

That wasn't what home was for Meredith Grey, though, and it never had been. Her mother and father had fought every night, their cruel words and loud yells as they expressed their constant anger at each other haunting her in the earliest and latest hours possible. And, at the age of four, her mother and father finally ended their torturous relationship and she moved with her mother halfway across the country.

It hadn't been what she had wanted, but she had gone despite that. Her mother was in pain. It was obvious, and after the trauma of ending two relationships in less than a week, Ellis seemed to be a little worse for wear. But her mother remained strong, as she always did, never allowing her daughter to see the tears Meredith knew her mother must have cried. There were never trails on her cheeks, never red and bloodshot eyes in the morning. Her mother was impervious following her divorce, and her imperviousness had spread into her relationship with her daughter.

There was a reason Meredith had been so happy to leave and move to Europe for several years, and it was so that she could escape. She had never been in a healthy relationship at the age of twenty, which was probably not very healthy at all, but she refused to become as cold and bitter as her mother had. The fact that her mother's anger was aimed at her own marriage made Meredith absolutely positive that she had no desire to get married herself.

At the age of twenty-six, though, something had changed. She couldn't explain it, couldn't explain how one man and one drink, one night that she had trouble remembering, could be the cause of her greatest joys and her greatest sorrows in her adult life. It had, though, and she had been so positive that she was doing the right thing, that this would help her become strong but not impervious, that her happiness mattered and that he was the way to become happy and successfully so.

He had been married, though, and she had been heartbroken. Addison was beautiful, of course, charming and amazing at her job, but Meredith hated her with a burning passion. Derek had told her that Addison was his wife, that she was his choice, and yet Meredith couldn't help but hope for the end of a marriage, something that was pathetic without even trying to be.

But Addison was in love, as well, and it wasn't with her estranged spouse. The fact that Meredith knew what was fated to happen in that relationship made it even more tragic. But she knew that, at one time, both of them had been happy, and wasn't that what love was? Making each other happy despite your own pain?

And so she started a relationship with the man that had changed her life. He made her laugh, cry, and wonder about life. He made her strong but allowed her to be weak. He was her greatest decision, and she loved him more than she had imagined possible.

They had fought, of course. No marriage is perfect, and theirs often reached its end before they decided that what they were fighting for was worth more than what they were fighting about. It was one of the reasons that their relationship was more successful than any other, along with a mutual respect and a love that contained such fierceness that very few were able to understand it.

They had been there with each other through everything. They had nearly lost each other many times, and they had lost their child. But they remained strong despite this, and they did become parents one day, parents to a beautiful baby girl who lit up their lives and made them feel as if they were the luckiest people on the earth.

They had another child, a son, and he was just as cheerful as his elder sister. Derek had been so happy, having been raised with so many girls, and she had smirked when he had expressed this, reminding him that they had a daughter who would force their son to attend tea parties. He had deflated a bit upon this reminder.

They had the power to be extraordinary. No fight, disagreement, or argument in the middle of the night could take that away. But, despite their wishes, a truck had managed to do so, to end the life of a father, a husband, and one of the most amazing men the world had ever seen.

During childhood, home had been a place. The older she grew, though, she realized home was a person. As she sat at the bedside of the man who had caused such pain and such laughter, she realized that he had become her home. And, without him, she was just as lost as she had been before their first meeting.