After getting some chores and work done this morning, my aunt and I came back to the hospital to see my dad. My mom looked as though she had just spent the night dodging bullets, and my dad… Well, he looked like he just had heart surgery. I’d never seen him more frail in my life. He initially was so weak this morning that when the nurse asked him if he was ready to take a walk, he laughed and said, ‘No way!” His voice was weak, and he said his chest hurt every time he spoke due to the incision there from the surgery. Later in the morning after I arrived, he became more animated and alert, and he said he was up for a walk. He did not one lap but two laps around the ICU, and he said he could do another and feel fine, but the nurses said he should sit back down. Clearly, he was very proud of himself.

“How do you feel, Daddy?” I asked him today. “Do you feel like you have a new heart?”

He said he felt good, just very tired and a bit dizzy. The only pain he felt was from the chest incision. The nurse said that would take some time to heal, but the pain was completely normal. I asked him what it felt like between the period of getting sedated and then waking up after surgery.

“That Wednesday before the surgery… I was really scared,” he finally admitted. “I had no idea what was going to happen.” He then told me that wasn’t fully the truth because he spent a few days before reading all about the surgery and even watched a few bypass surgery videos on YouTube. Yes, that’s the kind of person my dad is. He wants to know everything and even see the gruesome stuff.

“Well, I didn’t watch the entire surgery,” he insisted. “I can’t handle that kind of stuff after a certain point!”

He said that after he fell asleep from the anesthesia, he felt like he was in one long sleep, like a coma. He said he dreamt he was in some place he didn’t recognize, and he said he had no idea which direction to go in. The next thing he knew, he was waking up, and he saw my mom sitting in a chair looking over him. Then it hit him: he survived.

“I know heart disease runs in this family,” he said. “Ever since I turned 64, I kept thinking… how much longer do I have? When is it (a heart attack) going to happen?”

It’s a scary reality to think about, but I’m so thankful that my dad had this surgery and every procedure and test before it that led up to this. Like my boss says, it’s like Life 2.0 for him. He has a new and renewed heart, and another shot at life. This surgery is “standard” for so many people now due to technological advances. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier being part of today’s world than the last 24 hours. My dad is going to be healthy and happy soon.

Did you hear that, Ed? Daddy’s on the road to recovery. He won’t be joining you anytime soon, but I know you aren’t upset about that. I know you aren’t worrying about the surgery anymore and are calm now that his heart has been fixed. Just don’t worry like our mother is about every little thing.

Someone from the hospital called to confirm my dad’s appointment tomorrow for his coronary artery bypass surgery. She said that we need to be at the hospital at 9:30am for some pre-op things to do, but the actual “procedure” would not begin until the early afternoon. After my mom got off the speaker phone, my dad says to us, “See how she said it’s a ‘procedure’? This isn’t surgery. It’s just a procedure, so this isn’t high risk or anything like that. They do so many of these every week!”

There are some forms of delusion that aren’t so terrible. This is one of them. If my dad is better able to accept this and have greater peace of mind when thinking of this as a “procedure” rather than a “surgery,” it’s completely fine by me.

It’s been almost a year since my dad’s best friend died. That seems like a weird thing for me to remember and think about, but he was a true friend and a genuine person, the kind of person who speaks in such a frank way that after he leaves you, you think, “Why can’t more people be as honest and real as he is?” He was a rarity.

I thought about him for the last two days after I heard about my dad’s blocked artery. I’m sure this friend had the same condition and just had no idea about it since he didn’t care for doctors’ visits and his general health. What would it be like if he were here and knew this about my dad? Would he take it upon himself to get his own heart health checked, too?

I have just a few but very fond memories of him and our conversations — in person, on the phone, and via e-mail. I remember asking him about his health, and he was honest and said he hadn’t seen a doctor in so many years. I told him that he should go — he was at that age when people started dying from heart attacks. He waved me away and said he’d think about it. I guess he never got around to it.

Too many sad things have happened in the last year and a half of my life. I still miss Ed every day, and the pain of losing him has only gotten stronger in the last few days since learning about our dad’s heart condition. But I hope that my dad’s surgery will go well and be a turning point in his life — in our lives together. I told him last year that he has to live until 150 and do whatever it takes to live that long because he’s not allowed to go anywhere. And I meant that.

Chris and I were at brunch today with my friend/former colleague and her husband, and we were telling them about how we use the One Second Every Day app as one way to document our lives. The app allows us to capture one second of every day and then mash them all together to create a single video. My friend’s husband was so impressed by the idea of it and my sample October video (since I break them up by month) that he downloaded the app on the spot and started playing around with it. “Wow, you guys are really documenting everything!” my friend exclaimed. We told them about this app after I mentioned I was creating a hard copy scrapbook of places we’ve been and things we’ve done together since the beginning of our relationship.

I thought about it for a while after we parted ways that afternoon. We spend so much of our time wanting to capture the “big” moments — births, graduations, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, holidays with family and friends, but as a society it just seems like we don’t spend enough time thinking about the real moments that make up our everyday life. Sure, those big life events are important, but how can we belittle what makes up the bulk of our lives? We get all excited and look forward to these big moments, but it’s almost to the detriment of the everyday — your *real* life. People don’t really seem to care so much when you are sharing a snapshot of what you did yesterday, but those moments are actually the majority of what make up your life and what your life is really about. Every day isn’t super exciting — it’s true. On Thursday, going to the dentist wasn’t fun or memorable, but it’s part of my life. It’s not always going to be glamorous or fun, and not everyone is going to be smiling or happy or posing with a champagne glass. But this is what life is — the everyday moments. And we shouldn’t forget that. This app is a reminder to me for this.

Someone posted an article today about how everyone, assuming they are physically and mentally able, should move at least five times in his/her life; the idea behind the article was that “staying is settling.” For the same reasons that people should travel, they should move to get a better sense of what it is like to live in another place. When you are living your day to day life in a place that is not your home and thus not a familiar, comfortable place, it forces you to really listen to everything around you, everything from the verbiage that people use in their everyday language to their accents, to what really matters to them. How do these people in the place you do not call home perceive your home? How do they see the world that is outside of their own world? And when we are all together from different parts of this country or this world, how do we fit in with each other, if at all?

I am completely aware of the privileges I’ve had as someone who has traveled as much as I have in the last 28 years of my life. Most of that travel only started happening at age 24 and after, but I know that not everyone is able to do the types of traveling I have done. But let’s be honest: millions of people have been mobile for centuries with little money to their names. Money isn’t the real factor that holds people back from exploring the world whether it’s through travel or through living in other places; it’s really fear — fear of the unknown and unfamiliar.

I’ve been very fortunate to live and spend a great deal of time in and around three major cities of this country – San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. Yes, they are all metropolitan areas, but they’re all very different from each other in countless ways and have given me some much needed perspective on what it’s like to live in differents parts of the country.

I’ve been spending time in the last couple of days with two people who have never moved out of their home town their entire lives. Granted, they are both in their 20s and still have lots of deciding to do for their lives, but both are pretty content in staying where they are and have little to no desire to move and live in other places. Everyone makes their own decisions, but it’s hard to listen to these decisions when they make stereotypes about places that they are unfamiliar with or have never been to. The most common (and untrue) stereotypes I’ve heard in the last 24 hours are that New York is a dangerous place, all the people are unfriendly, and all New Yorkers, because of the vast number of restaurants and cuisines to choose from, must all be knowledgable about different cuisines and thus food snobs.

New York City, while a unique and amazing place, in many ways is just like every other city. We have a lot of transplants, but we also have a lot of people who have never, ever left this city and never intend on doing so (and are damn proud of it, for better or for worse). We have food snobs whose preference when eating out is to only patronize “fine dining” restaurants (I’ve actually met someone who explicitly said this to me at a Yelp event), we have people who only eat at delis and holes-in-the wall type restaurants, and we also have extremely picky and narrow-minded eaters who won’t eat anything “foreign” to them (that could even mean the sandwich shop on the next street. I’m not really talking about alligator or rabbit here). We have low socioeconomic neighborhoods that statistically speaking have higher rates of crime, but we also have brightly lit, lush tree-lined streets with doormen guarding every single building down the avenue. And until you live here or in any other city, it’s unfair, baseless, and simply ignorant to make sweeping judgments about what a city is like.

A former classmate from college reached out and Facebook messaged me today. She is the former roommate of my best friend from college. We never really talked much for some reason or another. She studied art history while I studied economics and women’s studies. She and my friend rarely hung out outside of their dorm room or the dining hall, so I never really got to know her at all. I rarely see her posts on Facebook and almost forgot we were even Facebook friends.

She messaged today to say that she’s been following my recent Facebook posts about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and my brother, and she wanted to let me know how sorry she was about what had happened to him. “I had no idea,” she said, “But I want you to know I really admire what you are doing.”

We will probably never see each other again or be friends or be connected in any other way other than being Facebook friends and fellow Wellesley alums of the same year, but it felt really good to know that someone who I believed never thought much about me actually is in awe of something I am doing with my life.

Maybe Ed was so excited about seeing all the activity around the Out of the Darkness Walk and fundraising for the suicide prevention cause that he decided to come pay me a visit. I’ve had trouble waking up the last two mornings and have been sleeping in, much to my annoyance. This morning, I slept in, wondering if he would come back yet again.

In my first dream, I’m at the dentist’s office, and my dentist tells me that I have a cavity that needs to be filled. I’m annoyed at this thought because I can’t even remember the last time I had a cavity… I was probably 10? He then makes sure to tell me that I have some extra “tub” on my stomach that may be contributing to the cavity. That makes absolutely no sense, but I have to remind myself that I am in dream mode.

In my second dream, I’m sitting outside a house that I cannot identify, and out of nowhere, Ed comes walking towards me. I immediately get excited, as I always seem to do in these situations, and I get up and start running at him. I then jump on him and cause him to fall over on his back, and he starts yelling at me to get off of him. I tell him that I refuse to get off of him or let him go. “Why did you have to leave?” I yell at him while I start sobbing. “Stay here and don’t leave me again. Please stay.” He starts patting me on my back and says that he is here. He is here.

Well, Ed, if you are here, then why did I have to do a suicide prevention walk in your honor?

Today was the day of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Out of the Darkness Manhattan Walk. Over 900 people registered to walk and fund raise for this event, and while $160,000 was the original target goal, we collectively raised over $171,000 as of this morning. Of that, my fundraising campaign made up $2,365 of that. When I originally set my $1,000 goal, I wasn’t sure I’d even hit that amount, but to know now that the goal has been met 235% still overwhelms me.

During the walk today, it felt comforting to meet other people who have shared in the pain that my family and I have experienced in losing Ed. It was incredible to hear how passionate people are years and years after losing their loved ones about how they want to help others and continue raising money and awareness. Even after months, years, and decades of a loss, the pain will always be there. The void will still persist, especially in moments and days when the the next great victory or tragedy occurs. Some days are easier than others as they say.

I don’t want this to be a one-time event for me, though. I want to continue helping the cause and keep Ed’s memory alive. I can’t keep him alive, but I can keep his memory alive in me and what I do. Honestly, I wish I didn’t have to do any of this. I wish he were still here. I wish he were here and healthy and happy and independent and living a good life. But maybe he served his purpose in life and felt it was finally his time to peace out, and in leaving, it had to serve up a lesson to me, as well.

There were a number of moments I had today, listening to other people speak to me, listening to the chatter around me and seeing the big fundraising sign with my name on it as one of the top donors, where I could feel my face get hot and my eyes begin to water because this entire event was so overwhelming, yet oddly comforting. Seeing a big sign waiting for me that read “In Honor of Edward Y. Wong” was yet another reminder to me that yes, Ed isn’t here. He’s dead. That’s why you are doing this. This is all real. It still hurts, and I hate seeing his name anywhere near anything that is about death. But it’s my reality that I have to face, and the only healthy way I’m going to continue dealing with my pain is by making it into something that can help others, and hopefully make him proud of me — wherever he may be now.

For the last two months, I’ve been holding back telling my mom that I’m fundraising and volunteering for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In general, she’s never been a fan of charity and has always disapproved when my dad has given monetary donations, or when I have volunteered my time to organizations I’ve believed in. Why would you volunteer time to help other people when you could be helping your own family? she would always ask. In the case of this particular organization and cause, it’s even more sensitive and touchy because she doesn’t like people knowing how Ed passed away, nor does she want people knowing any details of the mental illnesses from which he suffered. The majority of her Jehovah’s Witness congregation have no idea my brother is not alive anymore or how he could have died. Her own living sister in Vietnam has no idea, nor the very few relatives on her cousin’s side in Southern California. It is still a big secret.

Two people in my life have insisted that I tell my parents — Chris, and his cousin’s girlfriend. It’s not about whether they will agree with what you are doing or care about the cause, they said. It’s about them knowing what’s important to you and what you are choosing to do with your life. It’s ultimately about facing the truth. I really didn’t want to, and I’ve been terrified of saying anything about it, but this evening, I finally decided (after being pushed) to tell her.

It was actually a bit shocking how my mom responded. For once in my life, she surprised me. She asked me how much money I had raised, and was astonished when I told her how much. How did you find out about this? When did you start this? She had a lot of questions and said she had no idea that these organizations existed. My mom said she was happy I was doing this, and that more needs to be done for this problem in our society. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

It’s amazing when the most predictable people in your life become unpredictable and surprise you in pleasant ways.

A third colleague donated for the walk after seeing my Facebook post today. He’s relatively new, as I believe he started at my company about two months ago. We’ve had friendly chatter here and there in the kitchen, and I could always tell he had a more sensitive side than other men at my company. After I saw the donation notification, I messaged him to thank him, and he told me that he was very sorry to hear about my brother. He said he could relate to how I feel because he’s actually lost two immediate family members and a former college roommate to suicide. “I’m glad that you posted it on Facebook,” he said. “It’s something that more people should be aware of because it’s far more common than anyone thinks.” More people need to acknowledge and talk about it. Why must we make the issue worse by not giving it its needed attention?

When someone dies from suicide in this country every 15 seconds, it certainly is more common than the world wants to acknowledge. I was so shocked to hear that not just one but two of his close family members took their own lives. How do we seem so together for individuals who have dealt with such horrible losses?