I’ve seen Chelsea Handler on and off on a few of the shows that we watch, including The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, but I never really thought much of watching her standups or shows until she talked about how she had a therapy session and came to the realization that she lacked empathy and needed to build it. I’ve occasionally heard her reference her brother who passed away, but I had no idea how he passed or what her relationship was to him.

The other day, we watched one of her standup specials that was filmed this past summer in New Jersey. She talked about her older brother Chet, and how he used to come home from school and she would try to “take care” of him by “serving” him a big bowl of his favorite cereal. They were close and had a special relationship. He was leaving for a hiking trip in Wyoming, and he promised that they’d spend time together when he came back. He never came back because during his hike, he fell off a cliff and died. She was only nine years old, and he was 22. As soon as she heard the news that Chet had died falling off a cliff, her immediate response was to take all the cereal boxes in the kitchen and throw them away.

As soon as I heard this, I just immediately started crying. It was like an automatic response to this awful shock and tragedy that she and her family had to face. Through work with her therapist, it was unclear whether she was more traumatized by the fact that he died, or rather that he made a promise to be with her again but never came back, or maybe both. Every time I hear stories of sibling deaths and siblings’ reactions to the deaths, I can barely handle myself. It’s just too much raw pain and trauma. His death happened over 30 years ago, yet it stays with her until this day and continues to shape how she sees the world and deals with life events.

I guess that’s also me, too, with Ed. Others don’t really get it until it happens to them.

Today, Ed would have turned 41 years old. If he were alive, I’d likely make fun of him and tell him that he was old. Since he’s not, I guess I can’t make any stupid jokes about his age. In life and in my mind, my Ed is forever 33, just three weeks shy of turning 34. I’m 34 now, which means… in my head, my brother is now younger than me. As odd as it sounds, that may not necessarily be far from how I saw my brother. Even though he was seven years older than me, in many ways, I saw him as though he were a younger brother. He’d never really fully matured and been self-sufficient. Many reasons exist for why that is the case, but I frankly think a huge part of it was due to our parents.

In the last few days, I thought about random articles, books, podcasts I’d listened to and read that reminded me of Ed. One of the ones that stood out to me was Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. If you are familiar with this play, I feel about Ed the way the character Tom feels about his awkward, unstable little sister Laura. I love him because I know him deeply, have lived with him, and thus I know his quirks and multiple facets. But the outside world, unfortunately, is not as forgiving and patient, and they never gave him as much of a chance to be known and seen and understood deeply, and ultimately to be loved. That’s the way the world is: other people will always be harsh on you; only a small, small inner circle of people around you will actually see you and really love you for your best qualities. Everyone else will superficially judge you for what is on the outside.

It’s like this podcast I was listening to that talked about how you generally will remember and think of someone only in the context you knew them, and that in itself will form your opinion of them. For example, if a colleague once berated you in public and never apologized to you for it, you will likely only have that to reference him by and won’t like him, nor will you have anything positive to say about him. It wouldn’t matter that literally every other person in your organization thinks he’s the smartest, kindest, most generous person. It wouldn’t matter that he devoted every Thursday evening to serving meals for the homeless or spent $10K every year on donations to support cancer research or suicide prevention. None of that matters because your experience with him was bad. We only see the bubble that we are in.

I want to say that I wish Ed were still here, but I know I would not be honest in saying that. He’d likely still be living at home, under the constant tyranny of my parents, who would criticize him nonstop and accuse him of causing them shame and embarrassment, even though it is really the opposite that is true. They’d never accept that they had any fault. They would only look to blame Ed himself. He would never be allowed to grow and truly become an adult as long as he were to live under their roof. With them, he’d never be capable of experiencing true, unconditional love, because our parents have no idea what that is like, as they live and thrive on criticizing others. He’d never know what it is like to feel real encouragement, to be told that he is smart and can and should do what he wants, and should trust his gut. We just weren’t raised that way. And above anything else, all I wanted was for my brother to be free of pain and hurt, to feel loved. If he can’t feel that in this life, maybe he will feel it in the next.

A true test of whether you think you are doing something “appropriate” to another person is whether you feel comfortable saying or doing it in front of others. Once you are scared to do it in public, shouldn’t that be a sign to you that probably, that’s not the right way to treat someone? It’s too bad our parents never realized that. Ed deserved so, so much better than he got. Sometimes, it feels like he died in vain because ’til this day, it’s like nothing about our parents’ lives have changed for the better. It’s like a pathetic existence that just continued and only got worse.

I feel angry today. Really angry. COVID-19 hasn’t helped this… because all I could imagine at the beginning was my brother stuck under the same roof as our parents nonstop and how that in itself would have driven him to suicide.

These are not great thoughts. But they are real thoughts.

I originally cleared my calendar today to help babysit my cousin’s son while my cousin and his wife were supposed to move. They’re in the midst of moving from the Upper West to the Upper East Side, so I figured I’d be a good family member and help out. Well, it ended up not being what I thought. I arrived, and my cousin said that his wife’s mom actually came earlier than they expected, so she’d stay with the kid at the old apartment while they moved with the movers to the new. Wait, I said. What does that mean I’m supposed to do here? And he suggested that I go over to the new place with him via his rental car and watch the movers to ensure they did not get a parking ticket. Their mover had already gotten one parking ticket at the old place and really did not want to get a second one. Well… that’s just great. I ended up standing around the front of their new building, appearing like a random loiterer wearing a dragon-fruit face mask, keeping my eye out for the cops. In the end, I did see one police car drive by, but they were clearly out for someone else totally unrelated.

They all thanked me for helping. I really didn’t feel like I did anything other than perhaps offer some moral support to the both of them. But maybe that’s what they really wanted me there for. They both looked like they had aged years and years since the last time I saw them. They’re also so paranoid about the virus that they are literally disinfecting every single new thing that comes into their apartment. I think my entire head of hair would be white if I did that, too.

My cousin who lives in Sunnyvale drove all the way up to San Francisco to see his mom, my aunt, and my parents yesterday. After not seeing them since pre-COVID-19 lockdown in March, this was likely my oldest cousin’s longest period of not seeing his mother. He calls his mother literally every single day and reports nearly every single thing he does to her every single day. She likely knows more about his life than his own wife does. So when I hear that he’s finally come up to the city to see her after over five months of no visiting, I think, great. Now, my mom’s going to be thinking, “Yes, that’s what a good child does — visits their aging parents during a pandemic!”

He and his wife stopped by a Chinese bakery, picked up some baked goods, and brought them to the house, all masked up. They sat in my aunt’s living room for 30 minutes with everyone wearing a mask except my mom (why am I not surprised?). Then, they left to drive all the way back down to Sunnyvale. How did he communicate this to me? He texted me a selfie of them all sitting around in the living room together.

My dad emailed me two months ago, asking when I would be visiting San Francisco again. I genuinely just do not think it’s responsible for anyone to be flying right now unless it’s a true emergency. Why would I want to risk other people’s lives just so that I could travel and enjoy myself? This pandemic has truly revealed exactly how selfish Americans are, in addition to how beyond moronic this federal government is. I see all these posts on social media of people flying across the country, flying to Montana to hike in Yellowstone and Glacier. And all I can think in my head is, “Why are you all such selfish fucks? FUCK YOU ALL!”

Thursday nights New York time / Friday mornings East Coast Australia time are when Chris and I get together with his parents and brother for our every-other-week catch-up since quarantine began. To be honest, it was a bit ironic to me that we were chatting this often given all of us have far less to do (and thus far less to discuss) than usual, but it was what his parents suggested given we all have more free time, so we agreed to it.

As events usually go, in the beginning, it was kind of fun because we didn’t talk this often at all. And then as time went on, they started to become more of an annoyance. It wasn’t something we really looked forward to and did more out of obligation (when I say “we,” I mean Chris and me. His mom obviously is loving all the time with her sons). The same topics would come up over and over again: are we getting laid off/pay cuts, what I am cooking, how are Chris’s mom’s eyes (she had eye surgery a few months ago), his brother indulging in talking about himself, his dad showing us some random box of crackers he recently bought, COVID-19, COVID-19, and COVID-19.

So Chris decided to be a bit melodramatic and say that since Australia has been slowly opening up and they can more or less go about their lives (minus international travel, which affects ALL of us given we all love travel) that this will be our last bi-weekly hangout, to which his parents and brother started a bit of an uproar. His brother fussing over this was particularly amusing to me given that he’s usually sullen and looking bored during every single call, doesn’t angle his camera so that we can see his face clearly (and I have a feeling he does this purposely to evoke a reaction from his mother), and doesn’t say much unless he’s talking about himself.

“But when it’s not COVID-19, you’re always so busy running around that you never make time to talk to us!”

“You barely share anything with us! We have no idea what you are normally up to!”

“What’s wrong with a family catch-up every two weeks?”

“That’s not that much to ask! Other families are talking every week!”

I didn’t really want to say anything or put in my own opinion about this until Chris’s brother insisted that every other family on the face of this planet was talking every week. Well, that’s just flat out not true, and to make a generalization like that is just plain stupid and not backed by any hard data at all other than one’s own circle of friends/family. When I brought this up, his brother’s comeback was, “My circle is bigger than yours, so it’s more representative!”

Ummmm, no. That’s not how data studies work. Just because you have a circle of influence and observe something about that group, regardless of its size, does NOT mean it is representative of the whole freaking world. That’s short-sighted and wreaks of “the world revolves around me, my experience, and my opinion.” This is actually the fallacy that most people fall into when they have some strongly held belief, including “I don’t see color,” “racism doesn’t exist,” “people would happily discuss race openly,” or “people in general aren’t sexist.” Because they do not perceive it or witness it, they then believe that said idea is not true.

I’m more amused by a statement like this because it’s not the first time Chris’s brother has tried to point out, “I have more friends than you, therefore…” It’s one of those things that he is clearly so proud about that he feels a need to constantly remind everyone, but on the flip side, it is likely something he is severely insecure about, as well. Why would I say this? Somehow, these types of statements do not include all the times he’s whined and whinged about his friends getting girlfriends or having babies and ignoring him, forgetting his birthday, or not committing to hanging out with him once quarantine had ended in Australia, yet publicly posting on social media that they were hanging out with other friends. Sure, you might have a lot of friends… but how good are they, really?

So the conclusion here is: no, not every family on earth is chatting every week. And no, the world does not revolve around you.

Since the COVID-19 quarantine has begun, Chris and I have been participating in a family hangout with his parents and brother every two weeks on Thursday night. It’s been fun to see them and to hear all the usual Jacob family banter about travel (or lack thereof), airline status, wine, and food, and this time around, we played Jackbox.tv and of course, inevitably experienced the Jacob brother competitiveness. It made me think about my own family and how a) we’d never want to do a video chat unless it was to focus on my cousins’ children, and b) no one would ever be up for playing a game of anything other than passive aggression.

The one time a cousin called me during this period, it was his wife who rang me for FaceTime so that I could chat with his young son, who wanted to see my bedroom and the view from our kitchen. Sadly, the call just made me feel odd and out of place, as I realize that I have very little functional relationship with any of my cousins, other than my dad’s younger sister’s son.

All three of my cousins seem deficit to me in some way. That sounds pretty arrogant and judgmental of me, but it’s how I feel about them, which has evolved over the last 34+ years. My oldest cousin is a mama’s boy, void of understanding anything that has any real depth. As my mother so crassly put it, “when he has sex with his wife, he reports back to his mother on it.” She partly said that out of jealousy because she’s mad I don’t share details about anything with her, but that’s another story. He loves to show off money and status, and the second you try to question his family’s decisions on anything, he becomes extremely defensive instead of receptive to feedback in the slightest. Thus, we can’t have any real conversation about anything that isn’t superficial.

My second cousin and I have never had much of a relationship. Since I was young, he was constantly condescending and flippant with Ed and me. He had no personality, no interests, nothing that made him even remotely interesting. It would have been more interesting to have a conversation with a rock. He’s also one of the cheapest people I know. When he started dating his now wife, he tried to be more personable around me when she was around, but I knew it was all an act to make it seem like he was a family kind of guy. When they married and had kids, he predictably dropped off the face of the earth, rarely acknowledging any of our family members, even his own brothers and mom, because his wife controls every aspect of his life, even when he wants to take a call from his own brother. He has no say, no opinion, and lives to obey his wife. That’s exactly the kind of man I’m sure many women would love to be with, but holy crap, grow some balls and speak up for yourself.

My third cousin on my dad’s side is probably the most childish, the most like a child in a nearly 47-year-old body. He is awkward, cowardly, and cannot speak up for himself or stand up for anything he really believes in. He lacks a voice and any strong will for anything. He hates the world, hates the U.S., hates all white people, especially white men, and says they are the reason he hasn’t been as successful as he could have been in life. He constantly complains, refuses to take any responsibility for what he could have done differently, and says he and his “kind” (as in, Asian American men in the U.S.) have it harder than any other group other than black women. He used to call me so often during my college years that my friends would say he was like a jealous boyfriend. Now that we live in a world where texting is the primary form of communication, he texts me randomly, “white trash,” “I hate white people,” “all white people should die,” among other hateful things (I mute his texts). Because I’m sure that doing all this makes him feel so much better about himself and his life circumstances.

The more I have thought about it, while there is something to respect about everyone in my family, overall, I don’t find any of them particularly good or likable people. My aunt is likely the one who truly means the best, but she’s so blinded by her beliefs and also, her lack of depth, that she’s impossible to have a real conversation with. All of this sounds horrible and maybe exposes my own arrogance, but I can’t really help it. Once, my therapist from years ago asked me, “Do you like your parents as people? Like, if they were not your parents and you just met them and interacted with them, would you genuinely believe they are good people?” I didn’t hesitate for a second. No, I responded. I would not want to be friends with them or have anything to do with them. We don’t have the same interests, the same values. We definitely do NOT have the same way of looking at the world.

That’s why you have friends and other families that become yours. You can find those other people you can bond with, can see eye to eye with, and genuinely respect all around.

I haven’t seen Ed in a dream in a long while. I figure that he is likely preoccupied with other things in the other world he is currently living in, so when he actually does come back, I wonder if there’s a reason for it. Maybe he’s aware of the current situation that the world is going through here with the COVID-19 crisis. Maybe he realizes that his parents and I aren’t really speaking right now. Regardless, it was comforting for a second to see him in my dream last night… even though the situation in the dream was bleak.

We were standing together in the stairwell of our parents’ house, and Ed was complaining about all the racism against Asian Americans that he’d been reading about in light of the Coronavirus. He said he was scared to go outside because he didn’t want to encounter racial slurs, or even worse, get beaten up or killed just for being an Asian in America during a time of what President Dipshit likes to call the “Chinese virus.” A neighbor across the street had given him dirty looks every time Ed had left the house this last week, so Ed said he wanted to take it into his own hands and confront the guy.

“I don’t think anything good will come of it,” I lightly said to him. “Just let him be and do your own thing.”

Ed was insistent. He said we had to confront racism and help people understand that we are all the same, just human beings.

He went over to the neighbor’s front door and rang the doorbell. I stood from the front of our house and watched. The neighbor opened the door, saw Ed, and grimaced. Out of nowhere, he pulls out a huge chef’s knife and stabs Ed in his calf. From across the street, I could see blood squirting everywhere. I screamed and ran over.

So, no, it was not a comforting dream in the slightest, but well… at least I got to see him and interact with him for a short time?

Most of my family history is not really that known to me. My parents rarely discuss their childhoods with me, except for little bits here and there (the general themes are that of poverty, not enough food, cockroaches, lack of education, and lack of parenting). My grandparents on my mom’s side died before I was born. My grandpa on my dad’s side died 12 years before I was born, and my maternal grandma was the only one I knew, but she passed when I was nine years old. What I did not learn until my college years is that my dad was not the only person in my family to serve in wars representing the U.S. (for those of you who do not know my basic family history, my dad served in the Vietnam War — or what the Vietnamese more correctly call the American War — and this was how he met my mom in Central Vietnam); his dad, Alfred B. Wong, also served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, stationed in Okinawa, just years before my dad was born. Two generations of my family have served in wars that the U.S. was involved in. And now 75 years after WWII has ended, many of these Chinese Americans are being recognized as Chinese American World War II Congressional Gold Medal recipients. I’m sure that by now, the vast majority of those who served have now passed, so their families have applied for the recognition. The real gold medals will be put on display this year at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C., but one replica will be given to each family who applies to have their family member who served recognized. My uncle, my dad’s younger brother, applied for my grandpa’s recognition with the appropriate documents to prove of his service, and it looks like regional ceremonies will be held across the nation to recognize these families for those who cannot make it to the main ceremony in D.C.

What makes me sad, though, about this recognition, is that I do not think anyone in my family has really, deeply thought about what any of this actually means for our family or for any other family of color who has served in any war representing the United States. I was not born early enough to see or know my grandpa, but what I do know of him is that like pretty much ALL immigrants who come to a country where they knew no one and had no money, he worked extremely hard to get the little he could to support his family and then, his family’s families. What would he feel if he were still alive today, knowing that his second eldest son served in the Vietnam War (which he did live to see), that his grandchildren somehow continued to get discriminated against in this country he actually fought for, simply because of the color of their skin, the shade of their hair, the shape of their eyes? Is this the “reward” that his family and people who look like us should get after two generations of service, after decades of hard work to assimilate into a country that will see us as perpetual foreigners? How would he react today, knowing this country is under a leader who believes immigrants like himself do not deserve to be here, that they leech off the system and just expect handouts? It doesn’t matter if you have served and risked your life for your country: people here do not appreciate you more. People generically say things like “support our troops.” That is all a superficial mask: what the majority of these people genuinely mean is, “support our (white) troops.” This was found time and time again across pretty much every major war when people of color, from Asian to African American, have fought for this country. Cabbies wouldn’t even take them back home from the airport when they finished their services abroad.

And what is arguably worse: that my grandpa’s youngest son, who is trying to claim recognition for his dad’s service in WWII, is actually xenophobic against Chinese immigrants who looked just like him and his wife, my uncle’s parents, has actively accosted and harassed these immigrants at the border, and now wants to avoid all “Asian restaurants and establishments” or Chinatowns and the like because he does not trust that they do not have the Coronavirus? What is worse — racism against another kind, or racism against your own kind?

Rest in peace, Grandpa. It’s probably best that you did not live to see this day.