Last night, since Chris had a mentoring event and a work dinner, I went to see La La Land with a friend’s girlfriend. I had been wanting to see it since I’d read about it and watched previews of it last month, and I figured a good time to see it would be on my birthday night.

It’s a bittersweet tale about an aspiring jazz artist and an aspiring actress in Los Angeles who fall in love, but in order for both of them to achieve their career dreams, they must do it on their own and cannot be together. The end is tragic in many ways because they cannot be together, and it’s clear that feelings are still there, but the positive part is that they’ve both gained what they wanted: she’s a famous actress, and he owns a jazz club as he always dreamed of.

“Mia and Sebastian’s Theme” — the haunting little piano tune that Sebastian plays that is an ode to their time together — somehow, it made me think of Ed when they played the song in the end, when five years later, Mia and her now husband happen to stop into Seb’s, the jazz club that Sebastian now owns, and they make eye contact while she and her husband are in the audience. It made me think of all the things I’ve achieved (or haven’t) in the last few years since my brother passed, yet this whole time he’s been absent from my life. It’s the big hole that has lingered that will persist. It’s also bittersweet. So much has happened in the three and a half years since my brother died, both good and bad, and time has moved on.

It’s strange that a lost love theme would trigger the memory of Ed for me. I guess in many ways, he’s a lost love in my life, just a different type from Mia and Sebastian’s.