My team at work had a team-bonding event last night, so a number of us went to Lucky Strikes for bowling, dinner, and a lot of booze. It was six men and one woman (that’s me). Of course, I felt the need to keep up with everyone else’s drinking, and although I know I have a pretty high alcohol tolerance for an Asian woman, they, of course, wouldn’t know this. I stumbled home pretty drunk, and ended up feeling emotional when I got back because I realized that it was the first time since my brother passed away that I’ve actually had this much to drink.

I woke up this morning with a massive headache and remembered a bad dream I’d had last night. I came home from work one day to see a pile of beneficiary information from State Farm about all of my brother’s accounts since he’d named me his primary beneficiary. There were so many forms and accounts that I felt overwhelmed and broke down crying, still in disbelief that my brother was dead and that as a result of all this, I actually had to deal with all of his financials.

In the past several days, I’ve felt the most hopeful I’ve ever felt in the last two months since Ed left us. But in the last day, it’s as though there were moments when it just hit me that he’s really gone, for real, and it just hurt so much. It’s as though the initial pain of learning that he was gone just came back again and wanted to torment me.

Maybe this happened because he could see from heaven that I was being too reckless last night. Or maybe he wants me to have fun, but not too much fun that I forget about him. If he thinks I’m going to forget about him after just one drunken night, he is obviously crazy.