No, not later. Now!

Sometimes my family can be so obtuse I could scream. I'm sure it's a trait I share in common with them. We'd rather dance around an issue, carving out the space where it should belong, rather than highlighting it directly.

Tonight offered a most exemplary example. My Mum came up to me and said she had something to show me. She then proceeded to point out to me where she kept her important papers, some envelopes of money, share certificates and the like. I didn't quite see the point of this, and I queried her about it. She calmly replied "I think I might be having a heart attack."

She wasn't haven't having a heart attack, fortunately, although we didn't know that at the time. She did have an excessively high heart rate however, around 150bpm. We rushed her off to the hospital as soon as we were able, despite a quite incredible lack of urgency on her part - I swear I was almost ready to drag her off to the hospital myself at one point as she wasted time fiddling around with a heart rate monitor she'd gotten hold off. A lot of waiting ensued at the hospital during which time a seemingly endless array of unpleasant and unwelcome thoughts flitted through my head. After a few hours we were able to see her again, and the doctors reassured us a little. They'd brought her heart rate down, and she looked, and felt she said, like normal again. She's been kept in overnight for further tests and hopefully we'll know more tomorrow.

At somepoint in the near future I'm going to have a conversation with her that's going to include a close approximation of this phrase: "If you think you're having a heart attack, for goodness sake tell me first, and worry about wrapping up your affairs second."