Saturday July 13th 2002
Rest in peace my beloved grandfather
As some of you know and some may have suspected my grandfather, Arnljótur Guðmundsson, has passed away. He died peacefully in the ICU due to a heart failure at the age of 73, on Sunday the 7th of July, shortly after the doctors had given him drugs to sleep and put him on a breathing machine. He had been battling heart and kidney problems for over 10 years but his mind was always crystal clear and he was in remarkably good physical shape. The last time I saw him was on the Friday before he died when he was in pretty good spirits and told me and my cousin some funny stories about various family members! He was the rock of our family, our grounding force, nothing could shake him and he always did what was right. He will be dearly missed.
It’s been just under a week since he passed away, but it seems like eons ago. Finnur and I have tried to make life easier for my grandmother and her children by going and putting notices in the paper and on the radio, babysitting and such, but for us the biggest problem was to arrange a fare back to the US. Unfortunately for us, there were no available seats on Virgin Atlantic from London to San Francisco until Friday July 26th, so for a while Finnur was going to leave on Thursday 18th and arrive in the US on the 19th, while I was leaving on Wendesday 24th and arriving in the US on the 26th. This would have incurred no extra cost for us since Finnur’s work covered his expenses.
Then we got an email from Stanford notifying us that Finnur couldn’t enter the US without me (I’m the J1 and he’s the J2 – my dependent) since we were entering using a new visa document (new IAP-66 for those that are interested). That put us in a complete frenzy, but after some phoning we will be leaving Iceland on Saturday July 20th and flying with British Airways to the US on Sunday July 21st. We’d like to officially thank Icelandair and their staff at Kringlan for just outstanding service and willingness to bend over backwards for us, changing our ticket to London not once but twice!
Today my middle brother, Pétur, is arriving from Belgium along with some more of the family, and tomorrow there will be a BBQ if the weather behaves (today is the first proper rain since we arrived).
