While doing my cardio yesterday morning at the gym, I was watching the news when the dreaded commercials came on (I work in marketing, yet I hate commercials). Closed captioning was on, so I could read whatever was said during the news or commercials. An ad about investing or retirement came on. I can’t remember the message word for word, but it was basically along the lines of “Don’t you want to lead a happy, fulfilled life?” Yet, at the end of it, this is how it appeared at the bottom of the TV screen:

“Don’t you want to lead a happy fulfilled life? -Ed”

I realize that there are generally mistakes in spelling and wording with closed captioning and transcribing in general, but where in the world did that end part “-Ed” come from…? It’s as though it was a hidden (and pretty explicit) message from my brother up in heaven, telling me that I need to lead a fulfilled life. I need to do things that make me happy and not engage in things that will weigh me down or stress me out. I’m currently trying to re-evaluate everything in my life right now to see what needs to stay, go away, and be added. This is going to be a long, slow process, but I’m hoping that I can take my brother’s advice and lead the fulfilled, purpose-driven life he always wanted me to lead (and apparently still reminds me to lead… even though he isn’t here anymore).

Last night, I finally fulfilled one of the things my brother always wanted me to: I finished reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. He gave this to me years ago when he first converted to Christianity, and though I had gotten three-quarters of the way through it, I stopped at some point because I got frustrated with messages that conflicted with what I thought was “right.” After his passing, I decided that I would finally not only finish reading it, but re-read it from start to finish as though I’d never read it before. So one chapter a day as it guides you to do, I read it before bed.

A few things still conflict with what I believe. There’s one chapter when I got really upset in which Warren says everything bad in your life happens “for a purpose.” There’s a reason for it to happen, and it will make your life better. I was so infuriated by reading this because of course, my first thought was, are you telling me that my brother taking his own life will somehow make my life better? How could that possibly be real?! I felt so much pain reading that chapter that I almost stopped reading it again.

But at the end of it, I actually felt a little bit more fulfilled then I thought I would. A lot of great ideas are in it that I want to go back and reread and reference in my Bible that Ed gave me, but the final chapter is kind of the sticking point. Its theme is “living on purpose.” That basically means that everything we do in our life, big or small, should be done for a reason that will serve why we are here on this earth. Will this make me a happier person? Will this help me serve God better? Living on purpose is the only way to live… because if we do not do this, it’s like we are just aimless vagabonds wandering through life, not knowing why or how or what… or anything.

Today marks twelve years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center here in New York City, and many innocent lives came to a tragic, premature end. Today is also the first 9/11 that my brother is not here to see.

My Ed was a worry wart; he got it from our mother. In 2008, when I accepted a job offer here in New York, he was worried about my safety in light of the 9/11 attacks, as well as what he’d heard in general about crime in New York (which he realized after visiting twice that it’s nowhere as bad as it used to be). As he was learning different moves in karate, he even set me aside a few times when I was home to show me basic self-defense moves in the event that I might be accosted. Apparently, he didn’t think I took it seriously enough, so he made me redo the moves over and over and over. It drove me crazy, but I knew then, as I do now, that he was dead serious about my knowing how to protect myself.

“Will you remember what I taught you?” he asked. “This is important. You need to remember this.”

Yes, Ed. I remember. I will always remember what you taught me, even the things you didn’t realize you taught me.

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.