Ed came to visit yet again in my dreams last night. That marks two nights in one week, which hasn’t happened in a while. Maybe it’s because I finished my evening by reading over half of The Glass Menagerie, and Laura’s awkwardness and inferiority complex further remind me of my brother. Like Tom, Laura’s younger brother, says in the play, he and his mother love Laura because they know her, live with her, and are related to her and know her quirks and different facets. The outside world isn’t as forgiving and patient, and so people won’t really give her as much of a chance to be able to get to know her in the way they do.

Ed and I are sitting in the living room together. He is watching TV on one couch, and I am reading a book on the other. It’s like any other day that I would be at home with him. He seems content. We are coexisting in the home in which we grew up together. We’re not speaking, but we acknowledge each other’s presence and existence silently. When you are really comfortable with someone, that need to always be conversing ceases.

I’m going back home in a week to see my parents. I don’t really care to see anyone else honestly; I’m really just going to see them and a few friends. The rest of my family doesn’t really care anyway. It always feels strange to anticipate going home yet again to a house where my brother once lived but will never be back to again. In the back of mind, when I forget for just a second that he is no longer living, I get excited and think I will get to see and embrace him again. And then the excitement almost immediately is blown out by the cold, depressing knowledge that he is, in fact, dead.