Not today.

What a difference a day can make.

My Mum responds to treatment and improves. She’s had a good night. She looks at my sister, who has come up from London urgently, and opens her eyes again. And smiles.

What is this thing called love, that causes strangers to pull together, and build hospitals, and take care of people in extremity, and is seen in the kind words of friends who reach out to hold us when we’re shaking, and opens the eyes of a poorly old lady when her daughter comes?

My Mum is waking up. I’ve seen her smile. She’s spoken to me. No, not well, but no longer fading, in such fierce distress. I feel myself recovering.