I am sitting in bed reading a book tonight when I look over to my left at framed photos of my brother, and I realize that it’s been just over ten years since I graduated from high school. Two of the photos are from May 2008, when I graduated from college, and my brother is with my parents at the Boston Commons and watching ducks swim. In the last photo, we are standing together on my high school graduation day, a sunny blue sky day in front of San Francisco City Hall, in June 2004, with me in my cap and gown, and him in a full suit and tie. We are both smiling at the camera, squinting from the sunlight.

Then I look closely at the suit Ed is wearing, and I wonder if it’s the suit we buried him in. I think it’s the same one.

He was really happy that day. His little sister was graduating from high school and about to start a new life in the Boston area. He was actually going to attend my graduation this time, unlike my middle school “graduation.” And he was going to shower me with all these gifts I didn’t really deserve to show how much he loved me and how proud he was.

He got all dressed up for me, which ended up peer pressuring all three of my cousins to at least wear button up shirts and slacks instead of their regular street clothes. “You’re wearing a suit?” One of my cousins asked Ed as we were getting ready to leave for Bill Civic Auditorium, where my high school graduation was held. “Why not?” Ed said. “Yvonne’s graduating!” My cousin immediately ran back to his room, obviously changing his mind about what to wear that day.

High school graduation was one of the happiest days of my life. I remember it with great clarity and pride; it was honestly a much happier period family-wise. I actually felt close to my cousins and my uncle, and I felt like we had as cohesive of an extended family I could have asked for. My entire family came – my parents, Ed, my two aunties and uncle on my dad’s side, and my three cousins who lived in the Bay Area. Everyone took the day off to see me walk across that stage and get my diploma. My then-boyfriend came, as did a couple of friends who had graduated the year before I did. I think I had to special request 12 graduation bids for my guests. My cousin’s now wife joined us for dinner that night at Roy’s but dropped an orchid lei off for me that morning, telling me I needed to have a lei at my graduation. My uncle had a special occasion lei ordered and shipped from Hawaii for me that day.

Ed was always suffering, but that day was probably one of those days that he suffered a little less. I still can’t believe it’s been ten years since that day. I keep thinking it in my mind, but I never thought that he wouldn’t be here ten years later, and it really hurts. I have no words anymore. It’s all like broken records to me. It will never stop hurting.

I hate that feeling of looking for something constantly and not being able to find it. When I got all my travel vaccines for Brazil, I left the booklet stuck in a massive stack of paper about vaccines and international travel on the kitchen counter. Chris put it away somewhere, and now I have no idea where it is. Even though I just found out I don’t need the booklet since proof of the yellow fever vaccine is not required for re-entry into the U.S, it still bothers me that I don’t know where it is.

So as I am fumbling through different papers and documents, I come across an official copy of my brother’s death certificate at the bottom of the pile. I’d never seen a death certificate before I’d seen my brother’s. Who would have thought it would have so many details on it? It even has to have the decedent’s parents’ places of birth. I have only really looked at it three times, and each time has not ended very well.

The simplest things in my family are difficult. My aunt is in town and wanted to arrange to have dinner with her son, his wife, their baby, her friend, and me. Everyone knows that I live on the Upper East Side, and they live in Bensonhurst. They own a car and have a parking spot; I have to rely on public transit. Yet every time a meal is planned, I have always relented and traveled over an hour and a half all the way to the end of Bensonhurst so that they can walk over to a restaurant, or at most, drive less than five minutes. That means over three hours of commute time for me round-trip. Every time I have asked about picking a spot that was somewhere in between, it has been shot down. “It’s too difficult to bring a baby that far,” my cousin complains.

This time, I put my foot down and said no. If you don’t want to compromise, I’m not going to give in. My aunt was disappointed and said it wouldn’t take me that long to get there (really? She’s obviously never taken the train on this ride, which includes at least one transfer depending on the weekend schedule).

I feel like I’ve spent most of my life giving in to the stupid wishes of everyone from my family and even some of my friends. But once my brother died, I realized I had to stop being as tolerant anymore because it was chipping away at my sanity and happiness. Sometimes, you really just need to say no to be happy. It’s not always about making other people happy… because in these cases with my cousin, it’s never appreciated anyway and is immediately forgotten.

On the way to dinner with a friend tonight, I spoke with my mom on the phone. As she usually does every now and then, she asked me how each of my close friends are doing. We got to one of my friends who has been unemployed for quite some time, and then she started telling me to comfort this friend. Her voice got quieter and trembling, and she said that she never really understood how bad Ed had it until he died. Ed struggled with depression for most of his life, and my parents wouldn’t really accept it. And for the first time, she expressed regret – not just as in the days after he passed as she did repeatedly last July, but in his life. “I regret not doing more for him,” she said. “I just didn’t understand then, but I understand now.” Yet now it’s too late because he’s gone forever. Why do we have to understand things once it’s too late?

It’s already hard as an adult to realize and accept that your parents are imperfect people just like you, trying to make the most of their life for themselves and their children. It’s even harder to listen to them actually admit it to you out loud. At that moment, I missed Ed even more.

We hosted brunch at our apartment today, which ended up lasting over seven hours. We’re spending more time with Chris’s cousin and her boyfriend visiting from overseas and spent a lot of time talking about random family memories and going through old photos and videos from family events. I made lemon ricotta pancakes with sauteed apples, two types of smoked chicken sausage (one with sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella and another with apple), scrambled eggs with Vermont sharp cheddar cheese that we got from Cabot Creamery Annex in Vermont (plus extra spices that Chris threw in), and peaches. It really did feel nice to just be at home relaxing all Saturday afternoon.

At around 6:30, I realized it was probably time to call my parents, so I went into the bedroom and called home. My dad answered the home phone, so we chatted for about fifteen minutes when my dad told me that my mom wasn’t home because she was out preaching. Then, I caught myself before I asked, “Where’s Ed?” I started getting a sulky feeling and felt miserable for the next few hours.

You’d think that if your brother had died and had been away from this world for almost 11 months that you would constantly be aware of it and never even think to ask such a dumb question. But I guess that because he’s so much a part of who I am that sometimes I just forget for a second that he actually is not here anymore – in our form, breathing and blinking and with his heart beating the way yours and mine does. I have moments on and off when I wonder where he is and what he is doing, as though he’s still one of us. Why haven’t I spoken to you in almost 11 months? The questions and the pain never seem to end.

We spent today exploring the city of Detroit and saw the Saturday Eastern Market and surrounds, the remains of Michigan Central Station, the 8-Mile area of Warren, Michigan, where Eminem’s 8 Mile movie was shot, and lots of examples of urban decay. I was startled when we visited Christchurch, New Zealand, last December to see theaters and buildings completely blown out and hollow from the earthquake devastations the city suffered, but the ruins and decay of Detroit bring about a completely different sullen feeling. It’s a city that once had its heyday, and is now suffering to survive with blocks and blocks of abandoned apartments and storefronts. There were some blocks we visited where there was just weed growth galore where buildings used to stand, and the growth had gotten so bad that it had overtaken the sidewalks; the sidewalks were not even visible anymore. I’ve never seen so many abandoned, massively graffitied buildings with their windows blown out and skeletons struggling to stand.

I have no idea what it would be like to grow up in a city like Detroit, but I’d imagine that overall morale would be low. There’s an invisible line that seems to separate the city – one side seems to be slowly rebuilding with fancy hotels like the Westin and Michael Symon’s Roast restaurant opening. The other side of that line is all despair and ruins and abandoned land waiting for someone, anyone, to claim it and build on it.

Ed and I used to have mini debates since he converted to Christianity that in order to be considered a “good” person, you had to be religious. I used to tell him that religious people can be good, but that doesn’t mean they are all good. You can be a good person without being religious. He vehemently disagreed with me. I would pause and ask him, do you think I am a bad person because I am not a Christian? He would always hesitate and say, no, but you need to accept Christ in your life. It was always what he wanted for me – to be a church-attending, Bible-studying Christian.

Like me, he believed that Jehovah’s Witnesses were a bunch of cult freaks. My mother and aunt are JWs, as they are modernly called today. My aunt is in town for the next four months, and she called today to let me know she is temporarily staying with her friend Maria, a JW friend who lives in New Jersey who is a complete freeloader and who said negative things about my brother being “you know…”  She said this to my face. Anyone who bad mouths my brother while barely knowing him deserves to be burnt at a stake and could never qualify to be a good person. I’m refusing to see my aunt if she brings this judgmental, loser friend of hers. I wonder if she ever feels any guilt that she put my brother down now that she knows he is dead and never to come back.

Tonight, Chris and I met up with his cousin and her boyfriend, who are traveling around the U.S. for two months. For the next month, they are renting an apartment not too far away from ours in Manhattan and will be exploring New York, as well as nearby cities. We had a lot of drinks and ended the night at Otto with even more drinks, great pizza, and pasta.

I’m generally pretty happy to see Chris’s family and friends. Among everyone I have met, they have all been very warm, happy, positive, and entertaining people to be around. What I’ve noticed, though, is that people on my side, especially my family, don’t always tend to fit those descriptors I just mentioned. So Chris doesn’t always welcome seeing them all with open arms. I suppose it’s hard for him to be excited to see them when I am not very excited about seeing them. At the end of the night, Chris asked, “So do you think we could meet up with Russell and Christine and have a night like that?”

No way in hell.

On our way up to Lake Placid in the Adirondacks for the weekend, Chris, his parents, and I stopped by Hyde Park, NY, to visit the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Home. He and his parents are history buffs, and they’d give us all a run for our money with the amount of American history they know vs. what us Americans struggle to retain from our boring U.S. history courses in high school.

The frustrating thing about visiting all these presidential libraries (I’ve now visited six) is that somewhere, you will find mentions of how most of these presidents have cheated on their wives, and it was basically something that was just accepted. Even after falling ill with polio and never being able to stand up or walk on his own ever again, FDR still managed to have affairs with other women despite being married to someone as intelligent, well-written, and articulate as Eleanor Roosevelt. I hate men.

Tonight, Chris, his parents, and I went to see the off-Broadway show The City of Conversation at the Lincoln Center. It’s a story about how after a certain political decision is made, a family gets broken up for 30 years because of differing political opinions and spans the period from the Carter administration to the current Obama administration. The arguments, which get quite heated, are extremely realistic – people argue their points, get spoken over, yelling ensues, and ultimately no one is really listening to the other.

After watching the show, I thought about political debates in my own family between the different generations, mainly my parents’ and mine, and I’ve realized how one-sided they are; my generation, which includes my cousins, Ed, and me – is so scared to ever argue our points because we know that our nearly tea party/right-wing radical parents, aunts, and uncles, would just talk over us, call us naive and make it seem like our opinions are just passing, and then claim we aren’t educated enough (even though we’ve out-educated them all) to understand the “real” issues. It would never be a real “conversation” – it would be a waste of breath. I’m not actually scared to argue against what they say; I’m just so exhausted by how idiotic these conversations end up that I can’t be bothered anymore. Example: the last time my aunt and I argued over gun control, she actually said, “So you want to ban guns? Why don’t you ban pencils while you’re at it because you could stab someone with it!”

Once, I had an argument with my dad about Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama, and he said near the end, “When you get to the point of making a lot more money, you won’t vote for Democrats anymore.”

A lot of the things that my parents’/aunts’/uncles’ generation get to enjoy, things like social security and pension, were created by the politicians claim to hate, and during their time of creation, were considered socialist. It’s as though they’re happy to reap the benefits of the past without realizing where these things came from and how they even came to be…. And then want to reject anything in the future that might help my generation and future ones to come. It’s just selfish and blind-sighted, and there’s no other way to put it.