Christmas is here, and so is my fuzzball’s 32nd birthday. Today was a day filled with food, laughter, loudness, photos, games, and happiness. Today was probably one of the most enjoyable Christmases I have ever had. Even when I thought of Ed today, I felt happy and hopeful. He isn’t with me anymore, but I still felt him all day long.

It’s the first Christmas he hasn’t been around for, the first Christmas I didn’t pick out a gift for him, the only Christmas when I didn’t speak with him at all – not even a phone call. It felt strange to call my parents on Christmas day, San Francisco time, and not ask to speak with him or hear his voice. I guess I will need to get used to it.

Every Christmas, I will think of him and all the thoughtful, beautiful gifts he gave me. I will remember us waking up in the same room, wishing each other merry Christmas, and exchanging gifts and unwrapping them together. I will think of and play with the Christmas ornaments he picked out for me, even when he knew we didn’t have a real Christmas tree to put them on at home. I will remember him playing Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas album, in particular “Jesus Born on this Day,” which he would occasionally set on Repeat. My brother is a child of God. He now resides in the House of the Lord, forever. And one day, I will see him again.

Merry Christmas, Ed. I love you.

Once upon a time, making a Christmas list was a fun thing to do. When I was between the ages of 5 and 8, my parents would tell me to write a letter to Santa explaining to him that I had been a good girl that year, and then let him know what I wanted for Christmas. That was fun while it lasted…at least, until I realized Santa was fake, but because I wanted the gifts, I continued to pretend that “Santa” existed until my mother decided I was too old to believe in Santa anymore. So those lists came to an end.

Then when I started making friends in high school, someone suddenly decided it was fine for all of us to make Christmas “wish” lists. I never really thought this was a great idea because I don’t particularly like people telling me to buy things for them, but because I figured it was practical (and since I am Asian, I am by definition practical), I went along with it.

Christmas is about giving, sharing, togetherness, Christmas trees and decorations, bright sparkling lights, great food, and for those who are religious, Jesus’s birth (even if his real birth date actually is not the 25th of December, but that is another story for another time). If I have to participate in wish lists, it’s like it sucks out the fun and imagination of choosing a gift for someone I am supposed to love. And if you have someone you don’t like shopping for because they annoy you in some way, then why are you choosing to give that person a gift anyway? Practicality is one thing, but I don’t think that in itself should be the only reason that goes into choosing a gift for a loved one. Imagination and creativity should come through in the gifts we give, which then translate into love.

Ed would have been so pissed if I were to ever give him a list or tell him what to get me. He thinks it’s a sign of being childish and a bit greedy and ungrateful for what you have. My wise Ed.

Since I’ve arrived in Melbourne, I feel like I have been inundated by meeting after meeting that has included babies. Most of Chris’s friends are married and have children, so I guess I can’t really avoid the presence of babies. It’s not that I don’t like babies; I actually love seeing their faces with their fat little cheeks, and playing with them is always fun and makes me reminisce about simpler times. It’s more that I get really bored listening to baby talk. It’s as though I need to pretend I am interested in every tiny detail in every child’s life – what his first word was, where it happened, and when; what he likes and doesn’t like to eat; what his favorite toys or cartoon characters are; what his sleeping schedule is like and how easy he is when being put to sleep.

Once people have children, their lives tend to revolve around them, and their sense of individuality tends to go away because their main priority is their child. I can’t really blame them for that because your children should be your priority, but where is the balance between being a parent and being a real person with interests of one’s own? I never want to be the parent whose children completely consume her life, and I wouldn’t be able to talk about myself and my own desires and feelings about life.

Maybe one day, I will be the parent who decides that my career isn’t that important (likely because I may be fed up by corporate life and the inane expectations that men hold of working women, and worse, that other women hold of working women balancing motherhood) and reduce my hours to part-time, or just give up working in the corporate world in general. I never really “believed” in this before, but because I am getting closer to an age where children are a tangible reality, I am more empathetic of women who put their children before their career. Or maybe one day, I will learn to fully balance a full-time, rewarding career with raising my children; I’m honestly not sure yet. But one thing I know that I will strive to do is to retain my individuality and not become that mother who is just a mother. I still want to be all the other things I am – a wife, lover, daughter, niece, sister (I am still Ed’s sister even if he isn’t in our form), friend, colleague, helper, writer, photographer, card-maker, scrapbooker, organizer, cook, baker, and everything else I can’t remember right now.

Ed came to visit again. I guess it’s like a monthly thing for him now to pay me a visit when I least expect it and when I am not consciously asking.

In the first dream, he has said that he decided not to die. He was taking it upon himself to improve and build a better life for himself. He was planning on opening a business of some sort, either a restaurant or a store, and wanted me to be happy for him.

In the second dream, I know he is dead. When I walk into my parents’ sun room, actually filled with lots of sunlight for once, I see him there, standing and facing me. I burst into tears and run up to him to hold him, and he initially gets squeamish and tries to avoid me, but finally gives in because he knows I won’t take no for an answer. I am sobbing, telling him how much I miss him and wish he could be one of us again. I tell him I’m not sure I can be happy. He chuckles and tells me to stop being so dramatic.

And then I wake myself up crying. This is really exhausting. Is this going to be a regular way that I wake up for the rest of my life?

When significant people in my life and the lives of loved ones pass, I always tend to spend time wondering what we are all really living for. Everyone has reasons for the choices they make – why they chose their school or profession, why they like vanilla more than strawberry, or why they chose one shirt over another in the morning. But how often is it that we actually stop and ask ourselves what we are really living for? For the people in our lives who make us miserable, why do we continue to associate with them? For the jobs that work us like slaves and give us little benefits, why do we not exert the short term efforts of finding a new one for a long term gain?

Uncle Bob made a lot of choices that I told him I thought were odd. Why stay in a loveless, hate-filled marriage and continue to see that person every day and partly support them? Why spend all day and night caring for your terminally ill mother when you don’t get any pleasure from it, and you see it as a true hindrance to living a real life, and you know there are many options that could better care for her than you as a single person could? Maybe some of us are programmed to be such creature of habits that we just seem to accept misery and pain as a necessary and even integral part of our lives, even something that we oddly subconsciously crave because we are so used to it.

I’m in New Zealand, arguably the most beautiful country in the world right now. Uncle Bob loved travel but never got the chance to visit Australia or New Zealand. He did say he wanted to see it someday, but now that someday will never happen. I’m sure he would have loved this. In the midst of all this beauty, I feel sad and silent thinking about the fact that he will never have the opportunity to come here in this human form. At least Ed via Bart gets to visit New Zealand. Who will allow Bob to vicariously live through themselves to experience more earthly life than he was allowed in his own flesh and blood?

Tomorrow, we’re leaving for New Zealand , the land of kiwi fruit and kiwi birds, endless green, turquoise bodies of water, and Lord of the Rings fame. Chris among others have called this the most beautiful country on earth, so I have very high expectations when we arrive that will need to be met.

Ed probably never thought I would take him to New Zealand. I suppose he was never really that curious about the world, so maybe he was one of those people who may not even know where New Zealand was on a map. We are planning to go canyon swinging, and Chris is planning to keep him in his zipped up pocket during the fall and swing. Queenstown is one of the adventure capitals of the world, and though Ed may have hated it when he was in our form, he has no choice but to jump with us now.

I had my first bout of allergies in my life when I came to Melbourne last December. In the last 27 years of my life, I’d never sneezed or wheezed or coughed no matter where I was due to pollen or flowers or grass. That was just a misfortune that my parents and Ed always had to grapple with that I did not. When they were sneezing and blowing their noses and battling watery blearly eyes, I was clear-eyed and clear-nosed (if that’s a word). So when I got here and immediately felt cold symptoms – runny and stuffy nose, coughing, phlegm – I just thought it was a cold and treated it as such.

So now, I am back in Melbourne for Christmas, and after spending a nice few hours outside for lunch in Chris’s friends’ backyard, I am a bit stuffy and runny, taking Telfast to soothe my little nose. My mom, being the mom she always is, warned me over the phone yesterday to bring a sweater or jacket everywhere I go, “because you don’t want to get sick again like you did last year!” I responded that it wasn’t a cold and that it was actually allergies. She had me on speaker phone, so in the background, my dad heard this and mumbles, “It’s not allergies. She’s never had allergies before!”

Yes, I’ve never had allergies before in San Francisco or Boston or New York or virtually any other place I’ve traveled to before. But Melbourne is a different place in a different hemisphere in a different part of the world. I’d never been here before and discovered something new about myself. And maybe if my dad decided to make the trip out here and were exposed to the pollen of the Australian northerly winds, he wouldn’t be saying that his little daughter having allergies would be an impossibility.

I guess that’s what happens. The more you travel, the more you learn about the world – and yourself. And when you don’t, in many ways, you are closed off from that world and the inner parts of yourself.

I’ve decided that coming to Australia in the winter months is probably not the healthiest thing for me when it comes to snacking. Pre-Chris, I was never much of a snacker, as when I did have food between meals, it was always fruit. Post-Chris, I have been exposed to lots of delicious but dangerous snacks, like Arnott’s Tim Tams, chocolate-dipped Scotch Fingers, and Barbeque Shapes, as well as the spicy and addictive bhuja or “mixture” that is ubiquitous in Indian families’ homes. These are chickpea and bean-flour-based snacks that are deep fried and seasoned with spice. It’s as normal as a place setting at the table. Nibble while you chatter away, and chatter and nibble away, we do.

The mixture we recently picked up for his mum in Dandenong was bought in varying degrees of spiciness. I’m sure if Ed were here, he’d probably eat an entire pack of this himself in a sitting and not even realize it. That’s the way Ed was – when you presented him with something tasty, he had little self control and would just keep eating and eating. I’m not quite sure if it was because the snack itself was so good, or if it was just because he loved the act of eating itself.

I saw Ed today. I’m not really kidding. I was in the bedroom here right after dinner at home with Chris’s parents, and when I came up to get dressed for our after dinner walk along the beach, I saw him from the corner of my eye staring at me from the next door neighbor’s front yard. I looked right at him and he saw me, and then when I looked again, he was gone.

Even though he’s no longer in the same form, I know my Ed is there watching over me. I don’t get to see him or talk to him the way I used to, but I can always feels him around, even all the way across the world and in the Southern Hemisphere. I miss him.