It’s like every day just gets worse. Today, my mother sounds just as miserable as yesterday, and she says that when she dies, she doesn’t want a funeral, no meal, no nothing. She wants to be cremated immediately after being viewed by just my father and me. That’s it. Don’t tell anyone that I died, she said. Don’t tell anyone unless they ask where I am. No one cares anyway, she said. Everyone just pretends. No one really cares. Do you think anyone really cared when Ed died? No one cared at all. Do you think anyone cared just because they took a half day off from work to go to his funeral? It’s just pretending, she said. You can’t trust anyone other than your own parents and siblings. Do what I say; these are my wishes. 

She told me this a month after Ed passed away last year. She loves repeating herself, especially when it’s pertaining to negative thoughts. It makes her feel better, she says. Isn’t that ironic, that it makes her feel better to say negative things?

How does one not tell others when a significant family member has died in her life? Or more importantly, why would one not want to share that information?

It’s like my life is one big drama movie and I’m just waiting for the next bad thing to happen.

This sounds pretty bad, but when I was growing up, I always knew that my wedding would not be “perfect.” You know how other girls day dream about their Big Day and envision how perfect it will be? Well, I rarely daydreamed about the Big Day, and I always knew in my gut that something would be wrong that day – whether someone important in my life would not make it because he/she died prematurely, or someone picked a massive fight with someone else, or the ballroom we selected got set on fire accidentally mid-reception. I knew something would be off.

I guess I have predicted correctly so far. As of now, it looks like the most “wrong” thing is that my brother can’t be there because he’s dead from his own suicide. To make matters even better, my mom is already a drama queen and we haven’t even set a date yet, and I’m positive she will be that way on the day of the wedding because how could she resist herself?

I’m so exhausted that even saying that is exhausting.

My parents apparently got into a big fight last night. Today, my mom told me that my dad cares more about the rental properties and making money more than her, and she didn’t want to live anymore. Her son was gone, I’m in New York, and her husband doesn’t care about her, so what is she living for? She then proceeded to say that I would not be seeing her again, and neither would my dad, and she hangs up the phone.

Being here in New York, I felt the same helpless, alarmed feeling I felt when my mom called last July and said that Ed was missing. What are my options here given the distance? I Google the National Suicide Prevention Hotline number and call them. They put me on hold forever, so it’s clear why so many people are taking their lives. I finally get through, I explain the situation, and the man on the other line tells me to hang up and call the local police department and have them go to my parents’ house to do a wellness check. Then, I call the Richmond police department and tell them what’s going on, and they tell me that they don’t handle these situations, and I should dial 911. I call my house, and my dad answers. I ask him what’s going on and why she is so upset. He responds in his pissy, matter-of-fact tone of voice, “You are to blame for this.” If she takes her life, he said, it’s my fault. I felt so much hate at that moment that I was tempted to blurt out that he’s just going to ignore her the same way he did with Ed, and we all know how that turned out. I insist he comfort her and at least be in the same room. He responds and says, it’s easier said than done, and easy for you to say in New York. Then he hangs up on me. I’d never had more hate for my father than I did in that moment.

I was finally able to get through after neither of them answering the phone forever, and I got my mom to calm down. She insists she has no reason to live anymore and no one cares about her.

My manipulative mother and my childish father… and my dead brother — what have I done in a past life to deserve this kind of family?

In the 27.5 years I knew Ed, I knew he was plagued by the childhood he had… or was deprived of. Much to my annoyance and at times lack of understanding, he frequently brought up painful memories of his childhood that clearly shaped who he became as an adult. One of the most frequent recollections he shared with me was how he felt ignored and rejected by our father.

I recently read a book about friends and relationships. In it, the author states that being ignored is one of the most psychologically damaging state for a human being; it is even worse than being treated poorly. Our father has always had his own demons and problems; he frequently to this day talks to himself loudly, even when in the presence of our family and even in public. At times, it’s like he is more interested in talking to himself and swearing at some mysterious person in his head than he is in speaking with me or my mother. When Ed was little and my dad was around, he told me he’d frequently try to get our father’s attention, but our father would ignore him and continue talking to himself. He’d shoo him away and say he was busy and continue to talk to himself. It’s one of the very embarrassing things I’ve had to deal with growing up and particularly now as an adult when I invite friends over. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t really like to invite anyone to our house when I am back in San Francisco.

Ed said he fought hard to get our father’s attention; he used to throw things, make loud noises, do anything to force our father to pay attention to him. Our father would just yell at him, name call him or say he’s stupid or dumb, and then continue tinkering with whatever he was occupying himself with in the basement. Eventually, Ed realized he was never going to win, and he gave up. He recalled that when our father did pay him any attention, it was to call him an idiot or a dummy or a moron or some other hurtful insult. In my own memory, I recall being called an idiot as young as five years old. I’m certain Ed had it even worse as a boy and the first born. As he got to his teen years, he decided to start giving our father a taste of his own medicine; he’d ignore him, too. From his early teens up until the point of his death, he rarely had a real conversation with our father unless it was absolutely forced or needed. And when he did talk to him, his tone was completely different and sullen, and he was always bracing himself for the next insult. For the rest of his short life, he never knew what it was like to have a father’s love and respect. There was absolutely no mutual respect between the two. And I knew during many occasions that our father’s cutting words never stopped having an effect on my brother because whenever it happened, Ed would freeze with pain and tell me constantly that he was waiting for the day for him to die so he’d be free of his criticisms.

No parent is perfect, just as no child is perfect. But what I will say is that being a parent requires more than just putting a roof over your child’s head, sending him to school, and placing food on his dinner plate. Those are like the bare essentials that a parent should provide to his child. That should not force a child to respect a parent.

In his last weeks, Ed told me he stopped blaming our parents; he blamed himself and only himself. I told him he was wrong, that it wasn’t his fault. You’re the victim in this, I said. He personally wanted to relinquish all his hate.

The sad thing, though, is that it was wrong for him to blame himself; he was blinded by his suffering. I’ll never forget that conversation because I knew then that he’d given up on living.

Today I was on the phone with my mom, and she sounded pretty gloomy. She’s kind of sounded this way ever since I left almost a week ago. It tends to be a repeated thing she goes through every time I visit and leave. I know she means well, but she can’t seem to get over it that my visits are just visits, and that I’m not moving back into that house with her ever again.

She said today that she was only going to live day by day and not plan anything for the future because there was no point for that, and she has no energy. She doesn’t know what tomorrow will be; in other words, she doesn’t know if she will live another day. There goes my negative mother with her black as hell outlook. I told her that if she thinks negatively, she will shorten her life, and she has to change her outlook, otherwise she’s going to continue being very unhealthy and susceptible to sickness (which she is). She sounded as though she was beginning to cry, and said that I have “no idea” what she goes through every day and that she doesn’t want to talk about this anymore; she just wants everything to be calm and peaceful — the irony in that statement. Then, she hung up on me. Lovely.

Today was one of those gloomy, grey days where it threatened to rain but didn’t. The temperatures were noticeably cooler, and the air felt a bit drier. I somehow managed to wake up for the gym at 6am despite not sleeping very well the night before. Maybe my body really can’t adjust to a three-hour time difference as easily as it has in my younger years with sleep.

Grey days are always the worst for me when I start contemplating random thoughts during everything from workout classes to browsing on the internet to just walking across the street. My thoughts always tend to drift toward Ed and all the things that went wrong for him in his life… mostly around our parents, our wider family, and all the bullying he endured as a child growing up.

Today, they circled around the fact that he wasn’t able to see our cousin’s first-born child when she was born at the hospital because of some stupid fight over a phone bill that was just $30 over the usual that my dad picked with Ed unfairly (it was my fault for not realizing that dialing a 650 area code from a 415 land line is considered “long distance; they changed the rules since the last time I did this). So our mother wouldn’t let him go in the car with them as they drive to Redwood City. The second thing I thought about today was how he didn’t get to attend our other cousin’s wedding or reception in San Jose in 2011 because our mother said he would embarrass and shame her and my dad, and she yelled, “Why would you take off work for this? It’s not that important!” I couldn’t attend because I was across the country and just came back from an expensive Europe trip, but I insisted to him then that he go… and he relented and did not.

I think it was that summer when I fully realized that my mother’s way of rationalizing things was only getting worse and worse, and it was that summer when she began making loud, public scenes, yelling at both of us in front of crowds of people. It was like the beginning of the end.

There are too many things he was deprived of that I’ll always be angry about. The list goes on forever.

I spent a bit of time on Lover.ly and theknot.com today reading about wedding planning, potential bridesmaids dresses that my friends won’t hate, and gathering ideas for everything from place settings, favors, bouquets, food station examples, and hairstyles. I came across an article about how to word invitations and important pieces of stationery when there is a significant loved one who is unable to be at the wedding either due to distance, health, or death. There won’t be any wedding program with the words “Brother of the Bride: Edward Wong.” I suppose I could word it as “Brother of the Bride: the late Edward Wong.” That sounds horrible. Or I could do what my cousins have done with their late father and dedicate the ceremony to my brother. I’m not sure, but I want him to be known there that day.

Ed’s inability to be there on this day will always be front of mind as the planning begins, progresses, and comes to a close. I want to find a way to make sure that everyone at that wedding, whoever decides to come, that is, knows how important he is to me despite the fact that he’s physically gone from my world. Maybe we could create a cake topper with Bart on it. Or maybe we could make sure that we have a mini slideshow just dedicated to him and me.

I miss my brother.

For the first time in over six years of flying between New York and San Francisco, I did not fly direct between the two cities coming back to New York tonight. I actually had a layover in Dallas, much to my utter annoyance. The price difference, if I can remember it correctly, was over $100, which didn’t make sense considering that this flight was already fairly expensive for this time of year. I’ve never paid more than $500 to fly home except for one time when it was around Christmas, which is to be expected.

My mom was pretty miserable this morning when we left. She’s always sad the day I leave, and more so this time since yesterday, she was thinking about Ed even more than usual because of the egg rolls we made together. It’s always a hard thing for me to see my mother sad. I feel like she’s tried so hard her whole life to do good things and be a good person, to work hard and support her family, yet at the end of the day, she’s never gotten what she’s really deserved and just isn’t happy. She’s happier when I am around because it means that she can do new, different things, and she can have someone near her who genuinely cares about her and doesn’t just want to talk about the latest shooting or crime that’s happened in the neighborhood.

The older I get, the more I realize how incapable I am of so many things. I can’t make my mom less nervous or paranoid. I can’t make my dad less negative and focused on his delusion of increasing crime and a terrible world of idiots. I can’t make either of them more open to doing “rich people” things like international travel and fine dining. No matter what I do, I can’t make my parents happy people. No child really can.

When we were growing up, it was always a highlight when Ed and I found out that our mother was making her famous egg rolls. The Vietnamese style egg rolls she’d make were a huge family favorite. All of my cousins would just sit there and gorge on them, dunking them into the homemade nuoc mam my mom would prepare and chomping away. It was usually either Ed’s or my job to grate the carrots for the egg roll mixture, and sometimes, we’d even have arguments about who should do it because neither of us enjoyed the task. Occasionally we would help roll them, but she always found our rolling skills sub par and demoted us to just peeling apart the egg roll skins and carrot grating. They are so well remembered and loved that my cousin in San Jose tried to replicate them recently, but he cheapened his version and omitted the shrimp.

This visit, my mom said she wanted Chris to try her egg rolls, so we spent this afternoon rolling them after a night of marinading the filling. As we filled and rolled, my mom reminisced on how excited Ed would get every time he’d see peeled carrots and the hand grater sitting in a big bowl in the kitchen. “Are you making egg rolls?” he’d ask, as his eyes would widen with anticipation. I could tell she felt empty as she remembered this. “This is the first time we’re making egg rolls and Ed isn’t here,” she said softly. I didn’t have anything to say to that. There was nothing left to say.

When Chris came back to the house today, we drove over to the Columbarium for Chris to visit Ed and for me to see him one last time before I leave home tomorrow. My mom immediately burst into tears as she walked up to Ed’s niche. I knew the egg rolls were the trigger. “Ed can’t eat any egg rolls,” my mom sobbed as I tried to comfort her. “He loves them.”

It made me feel a little sick to remember how much he loved them and how he couldn’t have any this time. Ed will never eat any of our mother’s homemade egg rolls ever again. And the rare times when our mother will make them, it will always remind her of how Ed can’t enjoy them with us anymore. And being a fragile soul, she’ll always cry thinking about it. As much as I don’t want to think about it, maybe it’s better that she not make them again.

As much as I am happy knowing he’s no longer suffering, it still hurts every day knowing that he can’t even enjoy doing these little simple things with us. It hurts even more being in this house and in this city we grew up in together. Every day this trip has been a constant reminder of his death and absence in our life. His innocence is constantly on my mind when I am home, as is his obsession with all things bedding related, his child-like interest in the Simpsons and Curious George and the Smurfs and everything else we used to watch on TV as kids, and his love of fried food and meat and his dislike of green vegetables. My sweet Ed deserved more from this life but never got it. The world just feels like a harsh place.

My dad and his younger brother do not get along. Actually, my dad doesn’t get along with either his living brother or sister; in fact, I just found out that my uncle and aunt, despite “getting along,” haven’t even seen each other since the day of Ed’s funeral. That was over a year and a month ago. My aunt claims she is just “too busy,” and my uncle says he has tried a couple of times without any reciprocation of desire from my aunt, so he’s thrown in the towel.

We had dinner altogether tonight, but without my aunt, and Chris joined, as well as my mom’s best friend and her husband, and another JW friend. My dad and uncle barely said hello or goodbye to each other. My mom’s best friend was visibly shocked when I said that my uncle was my dad’s younger brother. Yes, she wouldn’t have realized they were siblings since they wouldn’t speak a word to each other. It’s amazing that every time my uncle sees my face that he isn’t reminded of their mutual animosity against each other.

It’s been sunny skies and warm temperatures from the beginning of Ben’s visit here in San Francisco until the very end. He’s really lucked out with the weather. It’s been an enjoyable time taking him around and acting like a tourist again in my own city, but honestly since I’ve come back, I’ve felt a little stale. This city is a constant reminder of my brother, and while that is sometimes a good thing, at the end of the day, it is more depressing than anything because of the fact that he’s dead and the way he had to die. Whenever I come home, there’s a void. He’s not at his desk or in the bedroom we once shared. He won’t be coming home from work or karate and throwing his bag through the door as he unties his shoes outside before entering the way he used to.

But when I am not staying at home, like tonight and tomorrow since I’ll be at Chris’s hotel for work, it’s like I am escaping my reality and sad past that somehow seeps its way into my present every time I return home.