I'm so sorry for your pain, but it's good that you have poured it all out. I can understand your frustration at not being there when your grandpa passed away, but maybe your dad and uncles were so distraught themselves that they couldn't think clearly to call you. I've lost my mother-in-law and father-in-law and my kitty in the last 2 years, and I wasn't there for any of them either. (My in-laws died very suddenly at home from heart attacks, 14 months apart. There was no time to react.) I know that your grandpa felt your presence and still does, with such a sweet and caring granddaughter. It will be hard to go to the funeral, but you should, to show your love and respect for your grandpa. I agree with you that 3500kr is an obscene amount of money to have to pay for an obituary. I've never understood why newspapers have to charge at all for that. They make enough money from the other hundreds of pages; can't they be decent and post obituaries for free? Do they think people will abuse the privilege and start putting fake obituaries in the paper? They print the news for free, and an obituary is news, information, not something like a classified ad to make a profit. I don't see where there is even 3500kr worth of labor used to print those few small lines. Shame on them. You will eventually find the strength to post your own obituary for him on your webpage, and you can write pages and pages, with photos and all.
I stopped by your website - interesting! I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with school - my sister is studying at Cambridge in England, and she has a very useless supervisor too. She also had a lot of personal problems that interfered with her schooling, but she is supposedly going to finish this December (finally) and get her PhD in Linguistics. (About time, too, since she's 45 years old! No, she didn't start when she was 18) Hang in there; the clouds will lift eventually, but it just takes time.
The legend says that Mohammed adored cats. When one of them was sleeping on his sleeve and he had to go out, Mohammed supposedly cut off the sleeve so as not to disturb his pet.
A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast - Proverbs 12:10
How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven. - Robert A. Heinlein
What greater gift than the love of a cat? ~ Charles Dickens
There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. - Dan Greenberg
If purring could be encapsulated, it'd be the most powerful anti-depressant on the market. ~Alexis F. Hope
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