I had dinner tonight with a friend who is a former colleague, and although I’ve always known that she’s a pretty sensitive, fragile being, today I realized exactly how sensitive she is and how she tends to over-analyze and play scenes over and over in her head in an attempt to make sense of them. And I also learned that like me, mental illness seems to run in her family, as her mother battles with it along with some substance addictions, and a relative on her mom’s side committed suicide.

She said to me, I know how you feel and are probably scared of passing down that possible recessive gene to your kids; I was so scared of it that I decided a long time ago that I would never have kids.

It is a fear I have had in the back of my mind on and off. I thought about it a lot last year when Ed passed away and thought about my future children’s lives and how I would explain to them that they have an Uncle Ed, but he’s just not here anymore. I never want my children to suffer and go through what Ed had to go through. But I won’t let fear prevent me from attempting to be happy.

I met my aunt for lunch today near my office. She’s visiting for about 3.5 months and splitting her time between her friend’s house in New Jersey and her son’s apartment in Brooklyn.

My aunt has three sons – the oldest one calls her constantly, the middle one only calls her when he needs something (or is responding to her calls), and the last one complains to her as often as he can get his mother’s attention and expects her to drop her entire life to take care of his son — her grandson. She’s planning to visit her brother in the next two weeks in Boston since it’s only four hours away from here.

“It’s good to keep in contact and see family,” she said to me. That was probably an allusion to her middle child… And the fact that I told her that he doesn’t reach out to me at all, and when I send him and his wife e-mails, only his wife responds with him cc’ed. When I told her I contacted all of her sons to let them know about my engagement, she asked if he responded, and I said no. She had a “Well, I could have guessed that” look.

I come back from an incredible nine-day long vacation, the kind that if I had it my way, I’d never return home from, and somehow within an hour of starting work again (from home, though), a colleague decides to pick a massive fight with me and call me a lot of demeaning adjectives, making sure to use words like “always” and “this is standard for you all the time.” As you can imagine, I didn’t just sit there and take it like a punching bag, and I fought back. Needless to say, we got nowhere with the conversation and it ended with a massive lingering conflict.

It’s hard working in the industry that I am in – as a woman and as an Asian American. It’s a male-dominated, very white place (that is, my company), and people love to make sweeping assumptions about how you will act based on your background and your title. As an Asian woman, people assume, whether consciously or subconsciously, that I will just take orders and not question authority. Well, I wasn’t brought up to be a doormat, so that’s never really going to work for me. I will always say what I think whether people like it or not. If that’s something that gets me to be unpopular or even fired, then it’s probably a testament to that place’s terrible environment and low standards of work, innovation, genuine accountability.

It’s hard to talk about sensitive topics like death and suicide even when you are around friends you would consider close. But honestly, it’s even harder to broach these topics when you already know that your friend is robotic feeling-wise and doesn’t know how to express his emotions.

I have a friend who always says that when we get together, we’ll chat about things like greater purpose in life or what it really means to travel, or how being around a diverse group of people changes the way we perceive the world for the better. Those completely sound like elitist, privileged chatter subjects, but… it’s what we touch on in e-mails where we send each other links to articles that interest us. As I am getting older, I constantly find myself questioning the “why” of everything I do. It’s not like I voluntarily toil over it; the questions just subconsciously come.

But when we do actually get together for lunch or dinner or drinks, I realize that I leave him never having learned any new, undiscovered facet of him. It’s as though we at most may have touched these topics on the surface, and I am left still waiting for what I came to hear when he has already left. It’s troubling because then I wonder, how much do I really know this person, or how much do I really know anyone? Am I ever going to see that other side of him? Or maybe even worse, how well do even my closest friends genuinely know me if I cannot express myself fully when in their presence?

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.