Today, I performed my civic duty and voted in the New York City mayoral election. I knew I wasn’t going to wait in a long line the way I did  for the 2012 presidential election, but I was surprised when there was absolutely no wait, and I was in and out within five minutes. It’s as though no one feels the need to vote for our city or even country’s future.

Ed was like this. Even when he was of age, he never registered to vote. He didn’t understand or like politics (as if I do), and he didn’t think that his vote mattered (we used to bicker over this when I’d insist he should vote). Sometimes I get cynical and I think the same, but then this thought quickly washes away when I think about the women’s suffrage movement and how hoards of women less than a century ago fought for my right to vote. We all take for granted the privileges that we have that people before us have fought for and died over. While I think about this, it makes me sad to think that maybe Ed never thought about these things because he was so overwhelmed with his own inner demons that he couldn’t see or think about the history of people before him.

It’s okay, though. Now, my new duty as a citizen of this world is to preserve Ed’s memory and make sure he did not die in vain. Each day, I am thinking about different ways to remember my brother and prove to the world that despite the fact that he is physically not here anymore, he will never be forgotten, and I will always love him. The world will benefit from the unbridled love and affection he bestowed upon me in ways that it has yet to see.

I’m so exhausted in every possible sense of the term – physically, emotionally, mentally. I feel like everything in my body has been drained out of me in the last month and a half. I realized exactly how strained I was when I was feeling faint and weak during Bikram yoga today. I’ve never felt that way during class, even the first time. When I left, I felt like the loser who didn’t give her all during class, but I knew that if I tried to exert myself more, I might have actually blacked out.

When I am by myself or walking, I think about Ed and how I couldn’t do more for him. I think about what he could have felt during his last moments. I think about how lonely he must have felt. And when I am on the phone with my mother sometimes, which has been pretty often since this awful thing happened, I feel frustrated, angry, and even more cynical. It’s as though she is unknowingly trying to imbue me with more cynicism in my life by constantly telling me all the time that no one really cares about me other than my parents; everyone who showed up at Ed’s service didn’t really care. No one cares except your parents. Apparently if I died today, no one would truly mourn me.

That’s a really sad, miserable thing to believe – that no one really cares about you. Yes, the way a parent mourns the loss of a child is different from the way a sibling or a best friend or a spouse mourns, but that’s not to say that there is absolutely no sense of loss or caring; it’s just different.

I guess I have two battles that I am really fighting now – I’m still fighting to accept that my brother is gone and will never come back to me. But I have faith that within time, I will fully accept this, though I will obviously never, ever forget or stop loving him. The second fight is the scarier fight – the fight for optimism, to overcome all the cynicism that this experience has fed into my life, as well as the cynicism that my own mother tries to fill me with. As awful as that sounds, it is a fight that will probably continue for the rest of my life. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s something I owe to myself, the love of my life, our future children… And to Ed. We all need optimism to be happy, fulfilled beings. I need to prove to Ed that all this is possible.

Today, I remembered the disheartening Greek myth of how Persephone, the only daughter of the Greek gods Zeus and Demeter, became the goddess of the Underworld with Hades. In a nutshell, Hades falls in love with Persephone while watching her frolic across the the green fields of the earth, and so he decides to kidnap and take her back to the Underworld with him. Once he accomplishes this, Demeter, the goddess of grain and agriculture, becomes so distraught that she stops all growth on earth, which could potentially result in the end of all humankind. Zeus is troubled by this, so he commands Hermes to fetch Persephone back from the Underworld. In the Underworld, Persephone is distraught, refusing to eat anything. Hades coaxes her into eating a single pomegranate seed, which is actually a trick since once you eat something from the Underworld, you must remain there forever.

Rhea, the mother of Zeus, Demeter, and Hades, comes to a compromise with all parties: since Persephone has, in fact, eaten something in the Underworld, she would need to remain there for half the year, then spend the other half of the year on earth with Demeter. So, this is why there is spring, summer, autumn, and winter: during the spring and summer, Persephone roams the green fields of earth with her mother, and in the winter, she resides in the Underworld ruling with Hades. Her mother, not enjoying this one bit, stops the growth on the earth for those six months, resulting in the cold we experience during autumn and winter.

I thought about this in the context of Ed. It would be nice if for some parts of the week, I could stay on earth and live my usual life with my usual earthly people. Then other parts of the week, I could go visit Ed in heaven (I do not believe in an Underworld) in his world. We could talk, laugh, bicker, eat, and do everything else we used to do together when he was part of this world with me. Chris reminded me how this probably wouldn’t be as ideal as I’d imagine because it would be like reliving his death every time we parted. Maybe that is true. But what is also true is that I just want to see my brother again.

A lot of tragedies happen every day, and though it is easy to be cynical about life (and as I’ve been reminded, I am extremely cynical now), I know I have a lot to be grateful for. I’m blessed to have three best friends in three different cities who have done as much as they possibly could have done for me in the last month and a half, with their constant flowers and gifts and visits and phone calls. I have family and even former colleagues who have reached out to see how I am holding up from time to time. And I have Chris, the most amazing love and support a human being could ask for in this life. Life is made of the rich relationships that we build. Without them, everything would be meaningless and feel incomplete. I’m even grateful to Ed’s church friends, who have shared photos of my brother with me and sent me words of hope and strength. This world, though it still seems dark now, is a beautiful place. It is an incredible thing to be alive. I just wish Ed believed that.

My cousin and his wife have a marriage that I would frankly call a mistake. They are constantly fighting and disagreeing about the littlest things, and the worst part about it is that they have an innocent baby boy who is about to turn 1. His wife has shown no sympathy for the fact that I have lost my brother; in fact, she has told my cousin to “deal with it” and move on with his life. It’s always sad when you realize people’s ugly sides and how little they really care.

My cousin’s baby is barely a year old, and thankfully for now, he is blissfully ignorant of all the chaos and dysfunction that surrounds him. What worries me a lot, though, is what he will be like when he is able to understand what is going on around him at home, and how he may end up internalizing all of that. The worst thing you can possibly do for your child is put him through all the same crap that you went through as a child. As they say, we should be enabling a better life for our children, as they should do in the future for theirs. This isn’t just about money, though that is a part of it. It’s about time spent with our children – loving them and encouraging them. In my opinion, my brother never got enough of this. Repeating past mistakes of our parents and grandparents will only harm our future children.

Chris’s brother Ben has been nice enough to house us during our time visiting him in Toronto. Although he did make a good attempt at preparing clean bedsheets and towels for us, after two nights of showering in a mildew-ridden, grimy bathtub (which I later learned hadn’t been cleaned in over six months, if not longer), I couldn’t take it anymore and took it upon myself to bleach and scrub the entire tub (and even the sink as an added bonus). It took 30 minutes of scrubbing, soaking, and scrubbing again, but in the end, it was virtually good as new.

I know. I’m an anal clean freak. I cannot stand dirt or the idea that dirt is there. Believe it or not, just because you do not see conspicuous dirt does not mean a surface is clean! This reminded me of the times when Ed used to oddly tell me that he wished that one day, I’d move back to San Francisco, and we’d get an apartment together. Every time he said this, I’d burst out laughing and tell him how ridiculous the idea was. Would he want to live with me and my future boyfriend/husband? Was he insane? And did he think that I would clean up after him like I always did at our parents’ house growing up? My brother was the kind of person who was anal about visible dirt, but if it didn’t “look” dirty, it was clean to him. Plus, he hated cleaning and would put it off for as long as possible. The only exception to this was laundry, which he would do like clockwork.

I guess now, we will definitely never share an apartment. But that doesn’t mean that Bart won’t be hanging out at my future homes. He’ll always be there with us.

One of my aunts told my mom that suicide is a selfish act because when you choose to end your life, you’re thinking only of yourself and completely disregard how people who love you will cope with your death. While at first glance, that may seem to be the case, but that’s only because this outsider has no empathy regarding the depth of the pain and suffering one is experiencing when choosing that final action. Depression can be so deep that it completely prevents you from truly taking in anything that is said or done around you, and it just envelopes you to a point that nothing else can be absorbed in your mind. That’s pretty difficult for a lot of people to wrap their heads around; it’s even difficult for me to completely understand even when my own brother took his own life. None of us will fully know what that means unless we ourselves experience it.

My brother is one of the least selfish people I’ve ever known. I’m not just saying that because he’s not around anymore, either. He always thought about other people – what they thought, how they felt, what they wanted. His generosity sometimes drove me crazy because he’d want to give things to the most random people, people he barely even knew! Although his life was not long, it’s like what Rick Warren writes in The Purpose-Driven Life: God measures you not by how long your life is, but rather what you do with your life and how you choose to serve others (or not). In his short time on earth, Ed gave so much of himself to the people around him and those he cared deeply for, and that’s ultimately what makes me firmly believe that my brother is in heaven. He has a heart that would make angels cry.

I always wanted Ed to travel more. We never traveled growing up since our parents were very frugal, and the farthest we had ever gone with all four of us was southern California – the main reason was to visit Disneyland in Anaheim. I was 5, and Ed was 12.

I tried to get him to come to New York to visit me last year and said I’d pay for his airfare. He had come the year before for our cousin’s wedding, but it wasn’t that enjoyable for him since my mother and I were arguing the whole time, and he never enjoys himself as much when our parents are around. I wanted him to come with just himself, and I was planning on taking a few days off to show him around the city and convince him that New York wasn’t as dirty and disgusting as he thought it was.

I wanted us to take a trip together for a long weekend – we’d explore a city somewhere in the U.S. together, and I’d get him out of his comfort zone that is the overcast and gray depression of San Francisco.

I often envisioned Chris and I having a destination wedding on an island somewhere, and I would tell my brother not to worry about the expenses because I’d take care of everything for him. As long as he was there to experience it all with me, that would be the only thing that mattered. I wanted Ed to travel the world, and I wanted to take care of him and all his worries. Money wouldn’t matter.

He isn’t physically with us anymore, and I’m still angry about it. But he will continue to experience life through us, through our Bart Simpson. He’s coming with us on his first trip across the northern border tomorrow to visit Ben. Ed’s finally going to Canada, and I’m taking him.

I was listening to Nelson Mandela’s audio book version of his autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom, and during it, he discusses how he once thought that to have a BA meant that you could then become a true leader. I thought about this for a little bit, and recalled my brother and how he felt about education. Though he never did earn a BA, he did value education, particularly for me.

When I was in fifth grade, I expressed that my teacher was very poor in her teaching of long division. She really wasn’t a very smart person, and teaching was certainly not her forte at all, particularly in the math realm. Ed was so mad about this that he decided to take it upon himself to teach me. So a few hours a week, he’d set some time up with me to go over the fundamentals of long division, how it works, with many examples where he’d walk me through each step, and end with a few sample quizzes for me. I was terribly slow at learning it, but with his nurturing patience, I eventually grasped it. In retrospect, I realized that my brother could have become a really great teacher. He was so patient and empathetic.

I remember the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I took a psychology course at City College for fun since it was free. I’d always wanted to study psych, so I figured this would be a great opportunity. I loved that course; it’s by far one of the best classes I’ve taken in my life. However, I knew that it was an elective and would not be counted against my high school GPA, so for the first exam, I didn’t study. My professor (Robert Gurney) said that he would drop the lowest test score, so I figured I could slack off for the first exam. The night before the exam, I sat in our living room, watching TV, and Ed came over and asked how the class was going. I told him it was going well and that we had an exam the next day. He looked at me, puzzled, and then asked, why aren’t you studying? “He drops the lowest test score for the final grade,” I responded. “Yvonne, just because he drops the lowest test score doesn’t mean you don’t study!” He exclaimed. I laughed and said it wasn’t a big deal. This was Ed worrying about me as usual, hoping I would do my best and showing his big brother concern. I ended up getting a B on that test. On every test following that, I studied and got all A’s. Ed knew this, and he still thought I should have studied for that first exam. Oh, Ed.

I’m so lucky and blessed that I have so many great memories of my brother and that I was given 27.5 years with him in my life.

I finally came up with the courage to tell my mom today that I resigned and began a new job. I probably would have told her sooner, but given the grief and instability that my brother’s passing has caused, I figured it would be best to wait a bit before telling her. My mother is the ultimate worrier and pessimist; she always worries even in the most carefree situations, and when everyone else sees the best things, she tends to quietly point out the worst. I don’t blame her; it’s just the way she is given all of her experiences growing up in a war-torn Vietnam and as an immigrant in the U.S. The number one thing my mother has sought in a job is stability. She always thought I had that at Reprise. And I was bored to death.

The truth about my new job is that things have been going as good as they could be in the last five days I have been there; everyone has been even warmer and nicer (and smarter and less BS-y) than I expected. The culture seems to be exactly what I never quite had at my last company, and I know this will be a challenging, fun ride. My manager has been incredibly empathetic with me given the recent events of my family, and I haven’t felt more satisfied about work in this way for as long as I can remember (granted, I haven’t done any “real” work yet, but I hope to still be singing this song in three months’ time). In the beginning, when I had just signed the offer and given my last company my resignation letter, I was terrified. I was scared of leaving a place where I had built a solid reputation for myself over more than four years, as someone who didn’t just “know her shit,” but also was full of personality and well-liked. I was intimidated by how potentially more intelligent and efficient people would be than I at my current company given the nature of startup culture; people generally don’t fair well in startups if they can’t walk the talk. But in the last three weeks, though I have cried, snapped, and shrieked over and over about how unfair the world is and how my beloved Ed deserved a better life than what he had, I’ve realized that if I can get through my brother departing this world, everything else… would seem easy — relatively speaking. My worst fears came true when I learned Ed had left this world, so how much more worse and painful could anything else really be in life?

I owe it to Ed to take the chances that he never did, to take risks and enjoy life to the extent that he deserved – that I deserve. I never had the chance to tell him about this new job, but I know in my heart that he would probably be the happiest person in the world for me and so proud of his little sister. Everything I do from this point forward, I will think of Ed and think of every step as something that he would have seen and for which he would cheer me on.