The cruise company should eat the rest.
I told her she should try and at least get that other 50% put towards a later cruise, something she can take when she gets her head in the right space for it. She's going to see what she can do today, since the holiday weekend is a hard time to get things arranged.
I'm doing okay, myself. I'm happier now that I know my brother and his family were back in town yesterday (school starts today).
Before the funeral, I had worried about his only son (whose rejection of his father and complete jerkfacedness in his personal life had driven Wayne up the wall for most of the past decade or so) doing something obnoxious, but he was actually very supportive of Mom, even bringing in some childhood photos for the service and bringing his entire family along. He also offered to help with the planning, but his youngest sister (the only one of the three that was still close to Wayne) quickly told him that wasn't going to be necessary (she wasn't too sure how helpful he would have been with that). The other sister came with her husband but left their two kids in school and had originally told her sister that she would only sit in the back in the room during the service, but they convinced her to join the rest of the family at the front when they arrived.
Amazing how familial relationships can just cause the biggest headaches, isn't it?
The dinner after the service was somewhat enjoyable in the way everyone was sharing their memories of Wayne and his life. I sat next to Mom and across from Wayne's niece whom he was very close to (they would chat on the phone for an hour or so most evenings before he got involved with Mom, and at least once a week afterwards), and the niece had some great stories. After he had moved into the neighborhood, just around the curve in the road from Mom's, he would do the usual older-guy thing and sit in the lawn chair in the driveway and watch the world go by. He'd be chatting with his niece and would occasionally say, "Hey, Red's heading out in her snazzy convertible. Maybe she'll drive by and wave at me!" She said that he'd had his eye on Mom for a few months before he got the nerve to chat her up and ask her for a date. He called her "Red" instead of her name 90% of the time (her hair's a very pretty auburn).