Mum has died

Mum died in the early hours of this morning. Dad was with her. The family had been at the hospital since Monday morning, sleeping there, being there, keeping faith. Dad never left her side. Day and night, her husband, and children and brother were always with her, praying and talking, keeping silence, thanking her, holding her hand, telling her again and again how much she is loved. She knew. She was not afraid. It was terrible but it was also beautiful.

I know a lot of my friends and my family's friends read this website, so I am using this blog as a bush telegraph system to try to get the message out, because it is very hard for us to cope with lots of phone calls and emails at the moment; we are all in shock, and exhausted, and there is a very great deal of very hard things for us to do.

There have been many calls and emails already, even though we have only just woken up, but I am trying to deal with it on Dad's behalf, and so is my Uncle Ron, and this is what we are saying: thank you so much for your care and concern and prayers and love and best wishes. Thank you. We need private family time for the next 48 hours.

Please can you let us have this quiet time on our own as a family today and tomorrow and we will be ready to talk to people on Friday. On Friday morning the Bishop will be round, and we need to start communicating the family's wishes about the funeral, so if everybody else want to be in touch, please think about from Friday afternoon/the weekend as being the time when we will be starting to be able to respond and answer all your calls and emails. We really appreciate your support.

I will be doing one thing today: my book reading in Borders, Norwich, at 6.00pm because Mum asked me to. Told me to, in fact. I think it will be the hardest thing I have to do today, but I will do it because she wanted it, and I promised.

UPDATE: Someone else will be doing the Sunday service at St George's, not Dad.
The funeral will be a week on Friday at St. Georges at 2pm. We will get in touch with people about it soon but it is still being organised.
Apologies: I am likely to be slow in replying to messages right now, and sorry for that, I will get back when I can. Thank you to everyone who has sent such lovely support. It means a lot.