Today, my dad turned 69. It’s the fourth birthday he’s celebrated since my brother has been dead. Each time his birthday comes around, I am reminded once again that just ten days before four years ago, Ed committed suicide, and each year is a another year without Ed to see the dad he hated so much get another year older. My family doesn’t celebrate birthdays, anyway. Nothing is really worth celebrating to them.

Macy’s, a place where my brother worked for 12 years, is gradually shuttering its stores around the country. The location where Ed used to work is closing, so my dad suggested to my mom today that they go in to see what was on sale that they might need. My dad didn’t feel like going in, so my mom went in. She barely lasted 10 minutes before she suddenly started getting really dizzy and nauseated, and it peaked when she saw a young Asian man who vaguely resembled Ed working in the domestics department. That’s the department Ed used to work in. She left and told my dad she wasn’t feeling well and had to go home and lie down.

Our dad was never one to talk about feelings. He still isn’t. And so my mom felt relieved when I called her today so she could talk about it with me. She immediately burst into tears when I called. “I just miss him,” she sobbed. “I could have helped him, but I didn’t take him seriously. Why didn’t I do something to help?” She reminds me again of that day two weeks before he died when he came up to her and said he didn’t want to live anymore, that he had nothing left to do with his life, that he didn’t blame anyone but himself anymore. She didn’t even tell me this happened until the evening he went missing on July 22 of that year. “I should have done something then,” she added. “But it’s too late now.”

I felt really terrible and feel for my mom when she is overwhelmed by all these memories and feelings of guilt, but honestly… at that point, it was too late to help. The help was needed — long, long before that awful low point. Why didn’t she or my dad do anything earlier than that — you know, when he was a child and needed the love and attention of his parents rather than the verbal abuse and yelling and beating? Or, how about wishing your son a happy birthday while he’s alive rather than “remembering” his birthday once he’s dead?

I feel conflicted all the time about the two of them. My parents have so much pride and joy around my life, with going to and finishing school at a prestigious high school and then college, of working and slowing increasing my “rank” career wise, of living an independent life where I don’t rely on my parents for money or physical protection. My mom takes all the credit for my success, even for how I met Chris. So if they are so quick to say that all my successes can be attributed to them, then why can’t they just admit the fact that at the same time, they should also take responsibility for my brother’s life and suffering and pain?  Ed had so much potential at so many points of his life, and they didn’t want to believe in him even when they say in retrospect now that they did. I always hated that we were treated so unequally, and I still resent it now when I receive money from them or birthday or Christmas gifts. I actually really hate it and immediately am reminded that Ed never got those things ever after he turned 18.

I comforted her anyway because I have to and because I think it’s the right thing to do. I try to soothe her because I know my dad never will. But I’m still pissed. I probably always will be about this… until the day I die and finally join Ed.

A colleague asked how our move went, and as I was showing her photos of our new apartment, her eyes widened and lit up as she exclaimed about how “adult” and beautiful our new space is. “Wow, so this is how the other half of New York lives!” she said, stunned, admiring the natural light and the bathroom space.

All I have to say is, this isn’t how I grew up, and these apartments are not at all exemplary of where I’ve come from.

Post college, I was constantly humbled when people had no idea what Elmhurst, Queens, was. Even when my apartment was huge with a renovated granite kitchen and a brand new oven/stove, it didn’t matter because people are so location-obsessed in New York. And it didn’t help that slowly but surely, I started discovering the roaches all over the kitchen and the bathroom. Even my mom discovered them on her second visit and was constantly chasing them around the kitchen to kill them. She asked where they were coming from. I told her it was a combination of bad foundation, old home, plus the disgusting landlords downstairs.

Then, I moved in with Chris to a much smaller space on the Upper East Side. Though the building was good with monthly check-ins with the exterminator, plus an elevator and laundry in the basement, the biggest scare I would have is cleaning under the kitchen counter to find the occasional dead roach, usually at least one to two inches long. And one memorable morning, I woke up to use the bathroom to discover a centipede and all its scary legs walking all over the bathroom tiles. That wasn’t fun.

This is a very different place than what I’m used to. It still doesn’t feel quite like home yet, and I still feel like I’m walking around someone else’s house. But hopefully soon, it will start feeling like my home.

We came back to the old apartment to do some last bits of cleaning, and to sell and discard some last items. Once we emptied the remaining bits out, it was literally just a few reusable bags at the door with remaining belongings we’d bring back to the new apartment, plus the couch, sofa, curtains, and shelves that we sold to the next tenant who will be moving in at the end of August. I sat on the couch with the AC running and looked around at the place. I spent over five years in this apartment, cooking in that area, sleeping in that back room, sitting on this couch. And now, it’s coming to an end. It seems a bit sad. Even though the floor boards were coming undone and the brick walls were constantly shedding dust and sand and all kind of other disgusting things, I grew to love this place.

Onto the future. At least in the new building, I know I won’t have dead roaches randomly waiting for me or sand that comes out of a chimney.

Even though moving day was a long and tiring day, I ended up waking up naturally at around 6am this morning. I felt a little confused, and though I lingered in bed for a couple hours, I immediately realized why I woke up; we didn’t pull the bedroom blinds or shades down, so the morning light streamed through the window.

I cannot remember the last time I had this much natural light in my bedroom… ever. Even in hotels, I usually take advantage of those thick window curtains where you can mask out every bit of light, just because I could. Outside of hotels, I’d never seen such thick curtains before.

This place is going to take time to really feel like home. Everything feels like an adjustment so far.

Even though we hired movers to move all our boxes and lone bookcase, I still had to cart over a number of bags of things I didn’t want them to deal with, like our perishables from our refrigerator and freezer, jewelry, and random loose items from the kitchen and bathroom that could have become messy. I went to the apartment building first to get the keys from the building manager so the movers could enter, and as I unloaded all my things, the concierge came and asked if I needed help bringing my items to the room. I insisted I didn’t (and didn’t fully register that this is normal service in the building), but as I met with the manager, I left all the items near the service elevator. When I came out, they were all gone, and when I went up to the apartment unit, a porter came with all my items hanging from hooks on a cart and asked me where I’d like all my bags placed in the apartment.

I guess this is part of what I’m paying for, huh?

After work today, I went home to pick up two massive bags of old blankets to walk up to the ASPCA about 14 blocks away. As I walked up First Avenue, I noticed all these new wine bars, restaurants, and little shops I’d never really noticed before. It must be because I just never really paid attention, as well as the fact that this neighborhood has changed so much over the last five years I’ve lived here. It’s become trendier, more diverse cuisine has become available and actually stuck, and of course, more expensive and shiny high rises have gone up. Every day this neighborhood is changing, and soon, we’ll be gone and won’t see it evolving anymore.

New Yorkers have such an attachment to certain neighborhoods. I’ve grown to really love the Upper East Side, which I once thought as a food-and-drink area was quite mundane. Now, it’s flourishing with all types of cuisines. I noticed a Chinese-Hawaiian fusion spot on First Avenue in the 90s today, as well as a hip looking Korean spot just a block over.

I wonder what interesting things we will find in the new neighborhood. Who knows – maybe in another five years if I come back to this current neighborhood, I may not even recognize it anymore.

Tonight, I came home to meet the next tenant who will be living in this apartment. She’s originally from Atlanta but has lived here in New York for the last twelve years. She was living in the 30s on the east side and got a rent hike she wasn’t thrilled about, so she decided to start looking and found our unit. She’s probably the most respectful house guest we’ve ever had that we didn’t know; she asked permission for literally everything she did and even proactively took her shoes off without asking me.

The main reason she came by was so that she could take measurements for planning purposes, as she’ll be moving in during late August, and so she could check out our TV and couch, which we were hoping she’d take, especially the couch, since it would have required a sofa doctor to cut it up and take it out of our apartment given the doorway is too narrow. She saw both, sat on the couch, and immediately said yes, and Venmoed me right on the spot. Now, if only everyone could be as easy going and swift as she’s been.

We chatted for quite a while about quirks of the apartment, things to be mindful of, and favorite spots in the neighborhood, including our beloved Australian-owned wine and liquor shop that we’ll be missing. She immediately wrote that spot down; it was so obvious she couldn’t wait to move. She raved on and on about how big our bedroom is and how great our setup was with the kitchen island, as she saw it before we sold it during an apartment viewing. She said she wanted to set up the apartment almost exactly as we had it.

That’s my Chris, the closeted interior designer.

I hauled home more boxes from work today, and spent most of the evening cleaning out the kitchen, scrubbing the cabinets, cleaning all our wine and liquor bottles, and filling more boxes with our belongings. For people who live in a small apartment who don’t think they like owning “stuff” that much, we have already filled about 23 boxes with our “stuff.” Seeing all of it together boggles my mind that this small apartment held all this stuff, not to mention all the things we sold, donated, or tossed out.

I was talking to my friend this weekend about the packing process, and she said she could never imagine anyone else packing up her things for her. “Why would I want someone else touching and packing up all my things?” she said. “It’s my stuff. How do I know they will pack it the way I want it to be packed?” Well, it’ll never be done exactly the way you would have done it. But at least if money didn’t matter, you could pay someone else to deal with all this calamity.

But I’m too cheap and too much of a control freak to do that. I actually do find more comfort knowing that I packed all these boxes other than some random Joe-Schmo who could easily toss all my wine glasses into a box between thin layers of bubble wrap and think they did a good job.

This morning, we heated up our leftover food over the stove. It felt like such an old-fashioned way of reheating leftovers.

This is what life was like before microwaves.

When I was heating the food in a pan on the stove, I was thinking about the time I came home once and remembering how I went downstairs to the basement, and somehow, there were literally four microwaves stacked on top of each other. I had no idea where they had come from or why we even had them. So then I asked my dad.

Apparently, he had been collecting free microwaves around the city from Craigslist when people have moved.

“You never know when your microwave will break down!” he said.

Well, I lived at my last apartment for four years, and the microwave never failed me. At this apartment, where Chris has lived over seven years, this microwave has been more than sufficient.

Hoarding is not a good thing. It’s not healthy, either. At least all those microwaves are gone now.