my chinese new year was uneventful - not being able to celebrate or go visiting, i reread children's books and slept a great deal - simply slept. i don't know where the tiredness comes from - that grieving takes a lot of energy, i knew from the last three funerals - but this does not feel like those times. and now we've come to the end of the fifth of the customary seven weeks of mourning. it seems longer though - the mourning started in december, when we half-expected she would not come out of hospital again. and then, helping to care for my grandmother at the hospital, it was tiring, and emotional - especially when, one night, she called out in her sleep for her mother - and then there was the funeral - and since then, the presence of tension and irritability in the extended family as they busy themselves with the details of - cutting off the phone line and electricity, disposing of her belongings, selling the family house (real estate agents are so tiresome,) all day family councils are called, and people going in and out of lawyers' offices. i'm glad that when the time comes there will be just me to make the big decisions and no one to be quarrelsome with.