After I checked out from my disgusting hotel yesterday at noon, I had an Uber driver take me from the hotel back to my parents’ place so I could rest for the remainder of the afternoon. The oddest thing about the drive, though, was that the driver took the most erratic route. The quickest way to get from the financial district to my parents’ house from downtown is via Pine, and it’s especially fast when there’s no traffic (and at around 1pm on a Friday, there was none). He did begin by taking Pine, but when we were reaching the end of it, he went on some weird back streets and continued to use backstreets all the way back to the Richmond. And another odd thing: one back street he took brought us right past the Columbarium, right past Loraine Court, where my brother now rests.

I felt guilty this week for multiple reasons — being in San Francisco for work and not being able to participate in our mid-year kick off event, which was the primarily reason I was out here to begin with. I felt guilty being laid up in a terrible hotel bed when I was supposed to be engaging with my colleagues and doing work. I felt bad using company expenses to not work and instead to vomit into a toilet while being sick. And I also felt bad knowing I’d have no energy to go visit Ed at the Columbarium. It would be the only trip I’d ever take to San Francisco since my brother’s passing that I would not have gone to visit him, and it made me feel terrible.

So maybe this erratic route was some strange, other-worldly way to acknowledge my brother, to acknowledge the fact that I wanted to see him and say hello despite falling ill and not being able to do as I originally planned.