I had a dream that Ed died again. Chris and I rushed on a flight back home, and when we arrived at the Columbarium to prepare the funeral arrangements with my parents, my aunt, and my cousin, the funeral director says that their next open slot for a funeral and viewing would not be for another two months. I immediately was confused and angry, and I asked my dad how he couldn’t have known about this before I decided to fly home. He seemed nonchalant and made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal at all. “How could you not have known this or even asked?” I said to him. My dad stared back at me blankly. He obviously had no control of the situation, nor did he feel the need or desire to take any control.

I turned to Chris and said to him that we would need to come back in two months for the funeral. He whips out his work phone and says that in two months, he will be fully booked up with work travel, which will even include weekend conferences. There is absolutely no order or understanding here, and I lashed out at him for being so flippant about my own brother’s funeral, particularly given the circumstances of his death.

Then, I looked over at the funeral director and got angry with him for telling us this. “So what is it — do you just have a massive refrigerator that stores dead bodies for months at at time?” I said to him in disbelief. “How can you even plan funerals that far in advance? Are you just having people’s families scheduling when their loved ones will get unplugged or pushing people off bridges on certain dates?”

The funeral director also looks at me expressionless and says nothing to my questions. Everyone in the room thinks I am the crazy one there. But I think they are all crazy.