When I came home last week, the first thing to greet me as I rang my parents’ doorbell was a big sign duct-taped to the gate that said, “Please do not SLAM THE IRON GATE!!!!!” (Yes, those exclamation points are real; so is the capitalization). I thought to myself, that’s a really great way to scare people away from this house, and who knows… this may even scare away the mailman! I told my parents I didn’t think this was a good idea, and they just ignored me.

I brought it up again today with them, and my mother insisted that our neighbor upstairs, who rents a room from my aunt, has guests constantly coming in and out of the house, slamming the gate, the door, and even ringing our bell without realizing they are ringing the wrong one. The sign is not for our neighbor, she says, but it’s for her inconsiderate guests and family. I want to note that our neighbor is dying of cancer, and according to her doctor, she probably only has about two months left to live. She’s so frail that she can’t even make it to the toilet. She has to have a bed pan, which unfortunately goes into the garbage…. And my dad has to clean that. It wouldn’t be anyone’s favorite thing to do. Since my aunt is away in New York, she doesn’t have to take any responsibility for this.

I thought about how hostile and just rude the sign looked. Every day when she’d come back from one of her JW meetings or the doctor’s and would be in pain, she’d see that sign. Passersby would see this sign and think, what the hell is wrong with the people who live here? What kind of problem do they have? It just didn’t seem right to me to have such hostility and passive aggression stare at someone like that who’s dying. I told them that I think the sign should come down. My mom got angry and spent the entire airport ride being defensive and childish about it. “Stop saying things to hurt me,” she complained when I brought this up. “Just STOP IT.” She claims that the sign is not for the neighbor, that it’s for her bad guests. And I have no right to say anything because I don’t live there, so I have no idea about all the “suffering” that neighbor makes her and my dad go through. She even complained about the breathing machine making “all kinds of noise all night long” upstairs. Well, without that breathing machine, our neighbor would die, I said. Why are you complaining, and do you realize what would happen without the breathing machine?! She insisted they were right to keep the sign up, and my dad flatly refused to take it down. “They have no consideration,” my dad said.

This is probably why you shouldn’t have duplex or multiplex units housing multiple families. You have to deal with stupidity and passive aggression like this that is ultimately caused by both sides either not taking responsibility or choosing to be mature and reasonable. Some people just want to instigate and cause more misery and suffering without even realizing it, and they spend their entire lives depending their poor, thoughtless choices. They claim everyone else has done wrong to them and that they are constantly the victims. And these people are people I call my family.

I remember back in March 2013, I came back to San Francisco for two weeks to spend time with my parents and Ed. I worked part of the time and also took off about four days. One day, for whatever reason, I had to stay late at the office in the financial district, and I didn’t get back to the Richmond until around 7:30pm. My mom and Ed panicked, and they insisted that they “pick me up” from the bus stop at 20th and Geary. I thought that they were both being ridiculous, but I figured I couldn’t stop them.

I remember my brother calling for updates to see where I was along the 38L line so that they’d know when to start walking down the block. When I got off the bus, they were both waiting for me at the bus stop across the street, and as soon as I approached them, Ed insisted that I shouldn’t be so trusting of taking the bus so late at night, and that there were lots of crazy people in San Francisco now. It wasn’t as safe as I remembered it, he said. “Don’t pull out your iPhone on the bus,” he warned. “You don’t know who’s going to just snatch it from you!” He also admonished me to stay away from the back of the bus and to stay closer to the front and middle as much as possible.

I thought about this tonight when I took the bus home, and after I spoke with a colleague who has lived in San Francisco for over 17 years now. He relocated here from New England, where he is originally from, and he was telling me that there’s about a murder every week in San Francisco now. “It’s unfortunately not getting safer here, Yvonne,” my colleague said to me as we walked out of the office together with his almost 2-year-old boy. “There’s more people living in this city than ever before, and the police force just isn’t keeping up with the increase. There are more crimes and murders here than as long as I can remember it.”

Having this conversation with my colleague made me wish I didn’t brush Ed off as much as I did when he was warning me about the diminishing safety of our home town. Maybe he wasn’t being as ridiculous as I thought, especially now as I walk the streets of this city and wonder why every time I come home, the homeless and druggie situation seems to be worse than the last time I came.

I think I was really cursed. How is it possible that I could really have a family where a) when my brother dies, my cousin makes it all about him, b) that same cousin constantly calls or texts about how “miserable” his life is, and then c) that very same cousin says he can actually relate to my brother for not wanting to live anymore given that neither of them have any support system?

In a perfect world, I would not even be associated with this cousin. I would no longer see him or his text messages (thankfully, I can block his texts and calls now), and I wouldn’t have to invite him to my wedding. Who wants to invite someone to their wedding when that potential invitee explicitly states that he doesn’t care about your wedding? But then there are complicated things to consider, such as making his brothers angry, who would be invited, and even worse, making his mother, who is my aunt, angry. Bridges would be burned. Families would be broken. Well, our family is already broken, so what difference does it make? We’re not trying to be something we’re not. We’re openly dysfunctional.

I’ve had moments over the last year and half when I’ve thought about my brother’s suicide and the lack of note he left. I’ve wondered if I would have felt better or worse if there had been a note. Some people say a last note gives them a greater sense of closure. I’m not sure I quite agree with that because in my brother’s case, I know myself, and I probably would have obsessed over every single word in that note and never would want to get rid of it. I knew he was clinically depressed and spiraling out of control the last three months of his life. It wasn’t a surprise to me, and I could sense it more and more every time I talked to him over the phone in those days leading up to his death.

I did a quick search on how common suicide notes are. In an NIH study done in 1992 (the last year data was collected on this that I could find, which is pretty sad), less than a quarter of those who committed suicide wrote last notes. The majority of them were young females with no history of mental illness or previous suicide attempts. My brother’s not a woman, and he also had a strong history of mental illness with one previous suicide attempt. Ed was so lost in his own pain and suffering to even consider the idea of a note.

I feel an emptiness in this house without him here. I can feel his energy, but he’s not here in the flesh. It’s always the same feeling I get right before bed because I would have always gone to bed after him, and now that he’s no longer here, I can’t expect him to be in the bed next to me sleeping as I turn out the light. I have a strong urge to see him again. It would be nice to see him just once for a few hours, just to talk to him and hear his voice and laugh again. I’d tell him about how he’s going to be missing our crazy wedding in a year and how our mother is trying to control parts of it a bit at a time, and I’d let him know that I’m trying to incorporate him as much as possible because I haven’t forgotten about him — not even a bit. I just want a piece of him, and as the days go by, I feel as though I have less and less of him. It’s as though he is slipping further away from me even though he’s already been gone out of this life almost 19 months.

I look at the big framed photo of him smiling, the same framed picture we displayed at his funeral service, at night before bed while I am back home, and I just feel so hurt. Am I really never going to see you again in this life? Ever? Can’t I just hug you again, just once?