This happens every time I’ve come home since Ed passed away: I walk in, anticipating him to either be sitting at his desk, hoping someone will swivel his chair around and that this someone would be him. He’ll run up to me to give me a hug, and then help me bring in my luggage. If he’s not there, which he obviously has not been since July 2013, then my body is expecting him to be there when I open my bedroom door.

I say my body expects him to be there because my brain clearly knows he is not. It’s like the tiniest hope that runs through my veins that I will see him and be able to touch him again. He is gone from this earth, but my body expects his energy and self to be somewhere in that house, and maybe if I am lucky, I can sense and feel exactly where he is and physically feel him again. I expect him to be sitting and reading on his bed, or lying down and taking a nap. I walked into the house yesterday night, and he wasn’t at his desk. I walked further into the house and opened my bedroom door dramatically, and there was nothing. No trace of him — just his energy permeating the entire space.

I walked up to his old dresser, where that large framed photo of him from his funeral sits next to a koala, an orchid plant, and the funeral program. I ran my fingers over the top of the dresser and noticed it had recently been dusted clean.

“Hi, Ed,” I said quietly to his photo. “I’m home, but you don’t seem to be.”

The first hour or so back home is always the worst for me. I’m never going to get over this. I can try, but I know I will fail. In this one case in my life, failure is inevitable.

When we came back from Australia and Hong Kong at the beginning of January, I thought that hopefully by the time we left for Los Angeles for wedding planning errands that my bruised ribs and lingering cough and other cold-related symptoms would be gone, but I wasn’t so lucky. Three weeks into January, and I haven’t been able to do a proper gym workout even once, still have bruised ribs, phlegm and a cough. My voice still breaks when I speak, and I still sound like I am getting choked up when I speak. My goal is to sound and feel better before I see my parents on Monday night… because sure, I can really control these things.

I’m hoping that the Southern California air, despite how polluted it is, will help with my breathing. It will be warmer than New York, which has a scheduled snow storm that will hit shortly after we leave. I’m so happy to leave the snow storm that is New York, even if I am heading into what will be a wedding planning storm.

My birthday didn’t end so well yesterday, as coughing spells began again, and the night ended with a big headache and feelings that were very similar to when my pertussis was in full force. I was hoping to get better, not to get worse. I’ve never been sick this long in my life. “30 and thriving!” my friend wrote to me yesterday. Yes, I’d be thirty and thriving if I weren’t trying so hard to recover from this stupid whooping cough.

Maybe Ed sensed how miserable I was physically feeling because he came to visit last night after a long time of no visits. In my dream, I was at home, and I noticed he was coughing and blowing his nose a lot. He sounded congested. I told him he didn’t look or sound so well, and he agreed and said he felt terrible. I opened the medicine cabinet in our bathroom at home and started taking out the Vicks inhaler, some pills, and a thermometer, and proceeded to boil some water and prepare honey and lemon for him. He sat down, like a little obedient boy, and watched me as I prepared things to make him better. I put my hand on his forehead to check his temperature, and he seemed fine. He had no fever. I gazed at my sick brother and wondered how long we’d be together for until he’d leave me.

And then as always, I woke up. Stupid whooping cough, and damn it, Ed. Always leaving.

I was messaging a friend throughout this week regarding the death of her boyfriend’s best friend from cancer earlier this week. This friend had been battling cancer for quite some time, and he finally passed away this past Sunday morning. It’s always sad and difficult when someone you are close to and love passes away, especially when there were so many years of shared love between you. It’s even harder when that person dies, and you can’t even be there at the end of their life, and even at their funeral for a last goodbye.

He wasn’t too far away. He and his wife lived in St. Louis. The plane ride to get there wouldn’t take too long, but the more we talked, I realized the main reason they couldn’t go was that it’d be too expensive to fly there at a moment’s notice for them. I felt really terrible when she said this, realizing that money was the main reason they couldn’t be there to say a final goodbye and to help comfort their late friend’s wife. This is when earning more than enough money just “to get by” really matters, I thought. This is when money itself actually matters. Money gives you the freedom to make choices like this in cases of emergencies and things out of your control. And they don’t have this freedom because of the jobs they’ve chosen.

We all make our own choices, right? And I guess we have to live by them, for better or worse, and when we aren’t happy with the choices we’ve made, we have to change them. When I look back at the time when Ed passed away, I would have ended my own life before I wouldn’t have been there that terrible week… to be there for my parents, to say farewell to the brother I loved so much for over 27.5 years of my life. It wouldn’t have mattered if it cost $800 or $8,000 to be there; I had to be there no matter what. But I chose a job and a profession that allowed me that ability. And not everyone has that. But if I were in that situation where I had to go into debt to be there, I’d probably reexamine my life and how I live it and make sure that if this ever happened again, I wouldn’t have to get to that point of not having that freedom.

Yesterday, my friend and I were chatting on instant message, and he told me he had two tickets he had to give up because of a date that had to get rescheduled. He had planned for them to go see Drunk Shakespeare, so he asked me if I was interested in taking the tickets.

“Drunk Shakespeare?” I said to him. “That sounds like it’s going to be funny. You know I can’t laugh right now. It hurts my ribs too much. And Chris hates Shakespeare, so he definitely wouldn’t go anyway.”

“You still can’t laugh?” my friend responded, confused. “How long are you going to go without laughing?”

That was the saddest conversation. I told him that post antibiotics when I was spending a lot of time with Chris’s cousins, we laughed so much that I’m sure it only exacerbated my rib pain. The idea of being in any situation where I have to laugh too much or talk too much is a road to more rib pain.

This afternoon, I received an email from my extremely organized wedding catering manager, reminding me that our wedding tasting request form is due late next week in anticipation of our scheduled tasting coming up. Her e-mail also included a long list of things that I need to get to her by a few other target deadline dates, including a final head count and a full timeline of our day. While I very much admire and appreciate her organization, I felt knots in my stomach going through her email. It’s like the word “stress” was written all over that e-mail without her even trying.

As I looked over her list and looked at my own list that I have shared with Chris on Evernote, I could feel my heart racing, thinking, we really have to do all this by ourselves? Really? This is why people elope and have secret weddings at City Hall and don’t plan weddings with other people; it takes so much time, effort, money, and stress, and likely a few arguments with people you are working with, including your fiance and friends, along the way. I keep reminding myself that all of this will be worth it once the wedding week comes up. Everything just takes time, and I need to take this all day by day, line item by line item, and everything will be great.

My goal was to make it to the gym at least twice this week. Now, it’s looking like it will be zero times because my ribs are really not ready to be exposed to stretching and deep breathing that an aerobic workout would necessitate. I’m getting sad looking at the calendar, thinking that I may not even be able to go next week. When will this bruising stop and the pain go away? Who knew that whooping cough could leave such dire bodily effects on you?

There’s partly vanity involved in wanting to go to the gym, but the other part about it is that I always feel fresher, more alert, and focused when I work out in the morning versus when I do not. It’s always a struggle to get out of bed, especially when it’s as cold as it is here in January, but when I get out of the apartment and hop on the train, I know all that effort was worth it. It helps that I also have gym acquaintances, including a trainer who is trying to get me to do pull ups and lifts, who keep me in check; a few of them make fun of me when they don’t see me for a while, telling me I am slacking off or getting lazy (sometimes, this has some truth; other times, it’s because I am traveling for work or pleasure, which I don’t always tell them about ahead of time). As the wedding date approaches, of course, I’m also thinking about that, too. Chris and I need to work off all the calories we ate in Australia and in Hong Kong as delicious as they were, and now we have FitBits to keep us accountable (and competitive).

Tonight, I figured I would try to be social despite feeling cold and miserable being back and see my friend for dinner. We weren’t even out that long, but I could feel my ribs on the left side starting to hurt every time I coughed or laughed. Since the end of December, only the right side of my ribs ever acted up and needed to be iced, and I thought that was all I would have to deal with in terms of bruising. Yet somehow tonight, I realized I was wrong and would also need to deal with bruising on the right side, as well. It’s frustrating how these things creep up on you.

I’m coughing and wiping my nose with tissues at work, which I am sure is making my colleagues who sit around me feel even more thrilled that I am back. I think I will need to stay home and keep myself away from others for a while, if not just to prevent myself from speaking which causes coughing, but from laughing and also getting everyone scared that I might give them something contagious.