Of funerals and hospitals
16.01.11, 9:28 am

Just coming out of a horrible couple of days, though obviously infinitely more horrible for James and his family. His grandad's funeral was on Friday � at one point it might have been on Thursday, i.e. anniversary day, but even God decided that that would be too much of a piss-take. Although, to be honest, it would also have been very apt as the 13th is officially the worst day of the whole 365. Anyway, we left for Dumfries on Thursday lunchtime, after I spent 4 hours sitting at work doing nothing at all, and got there by late afternoon. I did some Excellent Driving in Challenging Conditions, which is the only silver lining I can find for what was a crappy day.

The funeral itself was actually really nice � definitely one of the best that I have been to. For once, it wasn't a massive rush; the minister really took the time to explore the kind of person that James's grandad had been, and to properly celebrate his life. Everyone was pretty upset; I wanted to cry but managed to hold it together, mainly because I didn't think it would be helpful for me to be blubbering when everyone else was so sad. The crematorium bit was mercifully short, as the crem bit is never anything but awful, and then we went on to the wake and had some lunch.

I had a sleep in the afternoon, as it felt that we had been awake for about three days, and then in the evening we had to go for a big meal with James's mum's side of the family, who have been nothing short of shockingly awful for the entirety of the whole period, so that was majorly awkward. In summary, James's mum's brother has made no effort to come up, help arrange the funeral or ring to see if she was all right, and had even planned to not buy any flowers for the funeral at one point. Consequently James's mum is absolutely furious with him, so we were commanded to form a buffer zone between her and them at the table that night. The meal was pretty nightmarish, especially as I was the designated driver and couldn't even use my faithful coping strategy of Lots Of Alcohol.

Anyway, it's all done now, and we're off back to Sheffield this lunchtime. James seems okay, just a bit quiet. On another subject entirely, I forgot to mention that I had my ultrasound last week, which went okay, and should be getting my results at the end of this week. And whilst we're on the subject of health, my best friend Mel is currently not well at all. She has a low white blood cell count and keeps falling ill all the time, and the doctors are not quite sure what's going on. I'm massively worried, but hopefully it'll all turn out okay.

Better go � am yet to have a cup of tea this morning.

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