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.

I’m leaving to go home in two days. Chris and Ben are coming to San Francisco, too. On Sunday, we’re planning to take a day trip to the Napa Valley area, and my parents are not a huge fan of this. The first reason is because my mom disapproves of over drinking (to my mother, “over drinking” really means having anything more than half a glass of wine; even that is a lot to her). The second is because of the 6.0 earthquake that the area experienced just three days ago, and my dad is concerned that a lot of the roads will be blocked off and that a lot of the wineries will be closed for repair. My parents just like to worry.

It’s sad to think about going back to Napa. The last time I was there was in March 2013, when Ed was still alive, and we went with our parents for a very uneventful day trip to the area and tasted no wine. We had lunch at a decent spot in downtown Napa, wandered around aimlessly while my dad argumentatively told my mom he didn’t want to taste any wine and certainly did not want to pay to taste. My dad was asked to plan the day, and as usual, he planned nothing, which made my mom extremely angry. And because she can rarely allow herself to take her anger out on him, instead, she took it out on us and yelled at us multiple times that day. Ed never liked wine, and he couldn’t do any tastings anyway because of his medication. All in all, it was a wasted, miserable trip that made all of us angry. I just felt bad for Ed at the time because he was trying to be positive that day despite my mom screaming at both of us.

This time I will be going with Chris and Ben, and it will very likely be a much better time. But I get upset at the idea of knowing that the last time I was there was with Ed, and we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to get there. We will have to drive over that bridge to get to Napa this time — the same place where he took his life, and a barrier is now being constructed. It is scary and almost depressing how quickly time passes, and how then, he seemed like he could have had hope and have been fine, and now, he no longer exists in this world, and I will be alone in that house with my parents.

Today, I had lunch with some former colleagues from my last job. Two of them I haven’t seen in over a year now, and the other I’ve seen three times since I left over meals or drinks. It’s funny how sometimes, you don’t see people for a long time, and when you do see them again, everything feels exactly the way it did as the last time you saw them. It’s almost like no time had ever passed.

It made me a little sad, though. I realized that even though I was unhappy at my last job, there were things that kept me going there, like the few colleagues who I did share laughs with about nonsensical things, and others who I actually did discuss serious issues with. People actually acknowledged I was a human being. My presence was noticed. I was listened to. If I wasn’t there, people noticed and asked about me. The people you work with and are surrounded by every day really help shape your desire to go to work every day. So it seems pitiful when you have no one at all to lean at at your office.

Last night, I found out that one of the comedians that highlighted my youth committed suicide. Robin Williams, the voice of the Genie in Aladdin, the main lead in Mrs. Doubtfire, which Ed and I watched together, has died via asphyxiation in his Tiburon home. I’m deeply saddened by this news, and particularly because his death was of his own means. It’s another life taken by suicide, by a deep depression that failed to be fully recognized and treated by our society.

I actually met Robin Williams in Japantown in San Francisco during my middle school days. I was with a few of my friends during a school holiday, and we saw him at a store in the shopping center. My friend’s little sister was so excited and asked for his autograph, and he seemed genuinely happy and eager to give his autograph and chat with us even though he was in the company of who I think was his mother. A lot of celebrities would not have been this warm and kind.

I wonder what Ed would have thought to have heard that Robin Williams committed suicide. I’m sure he would have been shocked, but unfortunately, he isn’t here today to hear the news. Instead, Robin Williams is joining him in heaven somewhere up there. I hope he is cracking jokes and making my brother laugh now. Maybe they are even cracking jokes about the fact that Ed took his own life before Robin did, as dark as that may sound.

Tonight, we had my best friend and her boyfriend come over for dinner, and after enjoying the Turkish feast I cooked up (and the many cocktails and whiskey pours that Chris gave everyone), we decided to head out at 2am for some late night karaoke a few blocks away. We were all at varying stages of drunkenness, so this sounded like a good idea.

When we got there, Chris and Crista picked Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day,” and after singing it on stage with Crista, I would end up crying. The bar was actually fairly empty so it wasn’t like everyone was staring at me, but it still felt miserable to be drunk, crying, and remembering Ed.

When the Daydream album came out in 1995, it actually coincided with the death of my grandmother. Ed and I would play “One Sweet Day” a lot at that time. It was one of our favorite songs on that album. That song used to remind me of my grandmother’s death, and tonight, after not hearing it played for so many years, it reminded me of Ed’s death. I had forgotten the lyrics, but as the music went on, I remembered every word. The lyrics discuss taking for granted your lost loved one. I think in a lot of ways, I’m sure I took Ed for granted, and it made me feel even worse.

There’s nothing that can be done about that now, but I agree with the song. One sweet day, we will see each other again. The sad thing, though, is that until then, I will occasionally be reminded of the pain of losing him and probably end up crying here and there, and not always at the most obvious moments.

I barely spent 24 hours in Fort Lauderdale for this work trip, yet somehow, the monstrous mosquitoes there were able to find me and give me bites in four different spots of my body, three of which were fully covered by pants and a long-sleeved shirt for my work meeting. All of these bites happened during one short walk from the hotel to our rental car. The one on my elbow has swelled up and is over four inches in diameter. How does this always seem to happen to me?

I am a mosquito magnet. I don’t know what I’ve done to attract them, but somehow, no matter where I go, I am their sweet target.