The week has really gone by too quickly, and now, Chris’s two cousins are on a bus, on their way to Newark Airport, where they will connect in Hong Kong and be off to Melbourne and Sydney respectively. It was like they just arrived, and their seven days with us (or rather, me, because Chris was away in London for work for the bulk of their stay) really lasted only seven seconds, and now they are suddenly leaving. I got the same feeling I had when I was saying my good-byes to Chris’s parents when they left in May, which is the same feeling I got in my throat and stomach when my parents and Ed left New York to go back to San Francisco in July 2011. His family becoming my family is only becoming more and more real, and I can feel it in myself every time I see another one of his family members. It’s a very surreal feeling, but a good one, really.

In Chinese culture, it’s the norm for Chinese families and friends to fight over the bill after a meal has ended at a restaurant. The driving force behind it is the idea of “saving face,” or really “having face,” because it shows that you want to take care of the payment and want to treat everyone, and can afford to do it and want to show your care for those people at your table. The frustrating thing about it, though, is that the people fighting over the bill tend to not all want to pay the bill, but they just want to have a big dramatic show of trying to get the bill, even if they don’t want to pay. It sounds very negative, but it’s true. Usually, it’s already been made clear before the meal who pays, but the fight happens anyway.

Well, last night, Chris’s cousins wanted to pay the bill for real, and I wanted to pay the bill for real, so we proceeded to engage in the biggest bill brawl I’ve probably ever personally experienced. We were in close quarters at J.G. Melon on the Upper East Side (where I’m willing to bet NO fight over the bill has ever occurred given the clientele), and we fought like there was no foreseeable end — it resulted it pulling, ripping the bill into two pieces, toppling over of items on the dining table, the waiter coming over to let us know that he had only one copy of the bill, “so please do not destroy it,” and my biting both of them on their arms and fingers.

At least in these dramatic cases, it’s nice to know that all parties fighting all genuinely want to pay the bill. It’s kind of a nice, comforting feeling. But I still won’t let them win. This is when winning does matter.

Over dinner tonight, Chris, his two cousins and I sat in a cozy booth at Beauty and Essex discussing everything and anything. They told us about how they were just in Toronto with Chris’s brother, and how straight faced he was when they were directly asking him when they thought Chris and I would get engaged. He said he reckoned that their cousin and his girlfriend in Singapore would most likely get engaged before us, and they thought nothing of it and thought he was serious with this belief.

They also mentioned that they discussed Chris’s brother’s relationship with me, and he had told them that he looked at me like a sister because of how close we had become and how often we communicated. I suppose I never actively thought about it before, but in that moment, I immediately felt really emotional because I realized how true it was. We really do act like siblings. Even though he is technically four months older than I, I look at him as though he is my younger brother, and we talk and bicker the way brothers and sisters do, but we immediately get over any differences, if there are any, and carry on like nothing has ever happened. He really is like a second brother to me.

Of course, then I thought of Ed, and I felt pain inside. Ed will never get to meet this guy that I call my second brother. Even though that meeting may have been slightly awkward considering how quiet Ed was and how gregarious Ben is, it made me so sad to think that Ed will never get to meet Ben, and Ben will never get to meet Ed. Chris’s parents will never meet Ed; no one in Chris’s family will ever meet him. There are so many moments and experiences and people that he will miss because he left my world this time last year. He’s missed our engagement, and he’s missed us sharing it with everyone we love.

I love Ed and miss him every single day. But I can feel that he would be happy knowing that I have Ben in my life now — certainly not as a replacement of any sort, but as someone extra in my life who will love me in a very similar capacity that he is no longer physically capable of.

Two of Chris’s cousins who live in Melbourne and Sydney are here in New York visiting us for the next week as the last stop on their big North America holiday for the last several weeks. I’ve met them a couple times before in Melbourne around Christmas, but this is their first time visiting us together here in the States.

Everyone on Chris’s side of our family knew that we were engaged except for the two of them, and Chris had purposely planned it this way so that we’d at least be able to tell two people in his family in person about our engagement. Chris’s other cousin and girlfriend were on FaceTime with us when they arrived, so they also got to witness my telling the girls that we were engaged. It was one of those really special moments when there’s so much screaming and laughter and smiles that you know as it is happening that it will be one of the most memorable moments in your life. It was the highlight of our day today, telling them about our engagement (or really, my just saying, “We have news. Guess what?!” and then sticking out my hand with my shiny engagement ring), and since Chris captured it on video, will forever be one of those videos that will get played over and over, and be a captured moment we will never tire of.

After spending the day with them hysterically laughing, being terribly loud and attracting attention everywhere we went because of our crazy volume all together, I realized that they are really like my cousins now. I feel comfortable telling them anything and everything about myself, even to an extent that I may not even share with my own friends. And my own cousins? Forget about it. I’ve finally accepted in mind after many years of struggling that my own cousins, at least the three from my dad’s older brother and wife, and I will never have a functional relationship. They will constantly disappoint me and fall short of my expectations no matter what happens in our respective lives. So it will always be a work in progress for me to just choose to stop taking everything so personally that they say and do (and… don’t do, in the case of not acknowledging or caring about our engagement) and to realize that now, I have new cousins who actually do care to know who I really am and love me and will be ecstatically happy that Chris and I are spending the rest of our lives together. Chris and I are not the only ones happy about this. We have special people in our lives who are happy for us, too.