doyle

Thanks so much to everybody who's offered condolences. I love you guys.

The funeral's tomorrow. I'm at my parents' house ("We're glad to have you home, we miss you terribly when you're away at university," said my mother, in an odd, sweet moment - note that I go to my local uni, a forty minute train ride away from home, and have never been away for more than 12 days...) My cousins are arriving en masse tomorrow, most of them from England and bringing the various spouses and kids. I'm the baby among the grandchildren, youngest by something like 6 years of the... (counting) eight of us (I know, it's very small for an Irish family. We make up for it by assimilating second cousins and many-times-removed cousins and people who marry in. They're all just counted as 'cousins'.)

I'm okay. We were close and I'll miss Nana (my three other grandparents died before I was born, or when I was too young to remember) but I'm glad she died peacefully and not in a hospital. And my family's attitude towards death is that someone dying peacefully after a long life is something to feel sad about, yes, but not to mourn (a comment I'm hearing a lot is what a lovely thing for my grandmother to go so quickly and easily)

Funeral's tomorrow. Then back to Belfast.

So, catching up on stuff I was meant to post this weekend - these are all backdated updates to save people's friends lists.