Out of the woods

Updating people here via blog as there have been so many messages and I know a lot of my mates & our family friends read this site....Just got back from spending another two hours at Mum's bedside in hospital with the family. Dad has rallied and I am no longer desperately worried about him. Mum is still paralysed on the right side, but she has eaten some yoghurt today - holding the cup by herself! She even laughed, although she still can't talk. My father, uncle, sister, brother and I are very relieved at these improvements. Now Dad has gone back to see Mum. My sister is lying on a bed, exhausted, and I am trying to catch up with messages.

Thank you to everyone who has written, texted, called, facebooked, prayed: it has been overwheming to have such support. I am sorry that I have not had time to get back to everyone personally yet. My family can feel it though: all these people thinking, wishing us well. It is extraordinary.

Oh God, I can hardly believe now that this week was meant to be the bloody book launch week: all the inteviews, the worry, the plans, all wiped out in a heartbeat because everything changed. All the anxieties stopped mattering, as did everything else. 'Your mum. She's in an ambulance. I don't know, yes, it looks bad...' Bang.

I went from being an anxious first time author trying to promote months of work that were really important at the time, getting my new career as a writer running - to a daughter, a sister who could be nowhere else but at my family's side.

I feel so bad for the publishers and the PR company they hired to work towards this week: all that hard work messed up. And yes, of course I will admit it: I feel selfishly disappointed and sad: why now, why me, why us? Mum and Dad were about to book train tickets to the launch, dammit, after a weekend of family joy. They were really proud and looking forward to this week. Did this have to come out of the blue now, when we were all so damn happy at last? Did lightening have to strike yet again?

Anyway. I've already emailed most of you but Out of the Tunnel launch party tomorrow has been cancelled. Maybe we can reinstate it in a fortnight or so. Mum is really proud and excited about the book: so I pray that we can celebrate it and her continuing recovery soon. Cross fingers.

I know I can't predict the future, but I am her first daughter, and she taught me many things; amongst which were how to hope and hold on - and how to be bloody-mindedly relentessly determined.

So if Mum is still signalling from her bed that she wants the book to be a success, and that was also the last thing she said to me the night before the stroke, I am bloody well going to do my best and make her damn proud.