Parakeets and chicken and waffles

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A few of my female colleagues have offered to have a mini bachelorette outing with me before I leave for the wedding, so yesterday, we discussed going to a fried chicken spot next Thursday to celebrate. And lo and behold, last night, I dreamt that I was at home in my backyard, enjoying the sunlight and taking care of two different parakeets, one blue and one pink and white, each in their own separate cages. They have cages that look just like the one that my Willie, my old pet parakeet, used to have when I was young. I left them alone for a bit and came back, and I notice that my mother has given both of them new food. One had a big piece of fried chicken on top of a waffle he was nibbling; the second had a mini hamburger.

Why would she feed these parakeets fried chicken and meat? I thought. This stuff is going to kill them!! Of course, they didn’t mind because they were just gobbling it all up. I guess this food sure beats having seeds, vegetables, and fruit.

Seen again

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I was on my treadmill at the gym today, and for the first time, I almost slipped off it. While running and staring out the window, I thought I saw Ed walking across the street toward me. This man had a black jacket, khaki pants, and black shoes on, and his walk was just like Ed’s. His height and figure were like his, too. I almost stopped breathing when my eyes followed this guy. In the end of course, it wasn’t him. But it reminded me so much of him. This has happened about two or three times since he has passed away.

It was even worse this morning because I’ve been thinking about him a lot the last couple of weeks during the lead up to this wedding. He feels closer to me, yet he couldn’t be any farther away from me now.

As the day gets closer

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The last two weeks have been really grueling for me. It’s not even just because of all the work travel, the flight delays and cancellations and the unforeseen hotel stays in cities I didn’t think I’d end up in. It’s because as the day gets closer to the wedding, all I think about is the fact that Ed won’t be there. It sounds really obsessive, unhealthy, and maniacal to a degree, but I can’t really help it. It tends to happen whenever I finish something and feel good about it, or when I am thinking about the food or the decor and in the back of my mind, I wonder what he would have thought about it. Lately, it’s because I’ve been listening to potential wedding music, and every song I choose to listen to seems to remind me of him. And then I tear up and think…. why can’t he be here with us? I’ve told this to so many people, but when you are planning big events in your life, whether it’s your upcoming graduation, your wedding, your child’s birth, you always think that the people you love the most will be there for you. So when they aren’t, it’s absolutely heart wrenching, especially when they aren’t here due to unnatural causes.

I feel the way I do about my wedding the way I do about the anniversary of his death and his birthday. As the day approaches, I feel like I am getting closer and closer to seeing him again. He will make an appearance in some way, or I will feel his presence even though I know he is physically not there. There’s no logic in any of that thinking; it’s just a feeling I have in my gut.  I wish he were here. I need to see him again.

19 days

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The people who told me that I would think I had all my wedding stuff together and organized and figured out… until one month before the wedding — those people are sadly so right.

We are 19 days away from the wedding, and I feel like there are still too many things to finalize that we haven’t done. This is why people hire wedding planners.

Because of our catering company that we chose, we are using probably the most inefficient and least intuitive event planning/diagram coordinating applications possible. I can’t even figure out how to lay out the ceremony chairs the way I want because it will not let me delete or add individual seats, only rows. This job should be done by a monkey, not by me.

Last supper

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Tonight, we had dinner with our couple friend we just met late last year during my friend’s nonprofit food tour. In a week, they are moving to Switzerland for six months for one of their job’s rotations. They are both very outgoing and extroverted, and every single lunch and dinner for their last two weeks in New York City would be spent with some combination of friends, colleagues, and former colleagues. They were both excited about it when telling us, but the whole time I listened to them, I imagined myself feeling completely exhausted.

It made me think about what our last two weeks in New York will be like when we leave eventually. We don’t even have friends that could fill up a week’s worth of meals in this city, let alone two weeks. A lot of the “friends” we made were just people we spent time with at work, and once we left work (or the company altogether), they were out of our lives. I’m sure that when we leave, the last few weeks would be loaded with doing a lot of the touristy things we never got around to doing, loading up on all the theater we will be leaving behind, eating at restaurants we hadn’t yet tried but always wanted to, and perhaps the occasional meal with a friend who would be staying here. But I really think it would be far less people focused and far more New York City — I will miss you — focused.

Family is overrated

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Family is overrated. People always say that blood is thicker than water, but most of the time the people making statements like that have no idea what a dysfunctional family can be like. It’s easy to make sweeping ignorant statements like that when you are blissfully unaware of how bad it can be.

Most of our wedding guests RSVPed in a timely manner, most far ahead of our RSVP deadline. I have one cousin who makes it seem like it is painful to say yes and that he doesn’t really want to come, so he decided to RSVP on the very last day for both deadlines I set and then complain that the sites were malfunctioning on the last day. That is probably our wedding website and Evite quietly telling him that his presence is unwanted. We really don’t want to host guests who are ungrateful and make it seem like it’s a chore and a hassle to come to our wedding. Just don’t come with an attitude like that.

And then I have an aunt who has been passive aggressive with me since I told her that her on again, off again boyfriend would no longer be welcome at the wedding. I refuse to host drama at my wedding events. I sent a reminder to RSVP for the optional wedding events. She forwarded my e-mail to her best friend… well, she thought she did, and asked her advice about whether she should continue ignoring me or just respond finally. She actually made the mistake of sending it…. straight to me. So I called her out on it and emailed her back, telling her that I don’t believe I was meant to be the recipient of this message. She dumbly responds, saying she has no idea how that got sent to me and that it had nothing to do with my message, and yes, she will be attending both optional events. What a pity.

Short attention span

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I realized today that a short attention span is not only affecting my generation, but also the generation before me. I sent out an e-mail reminder regarding the welcome dinner and farewell brunch that Chris and I are hosting around our wedding to my side guests, and my cousin’s wife responded to me, letting me know that she already let us know that she is coming to our wedding. Well, if she had read the message I wrote, I explicitly asked for an RSVP for Thursday night and Saturday morning, not Friday’s wedding. Her message came off as passive aggressive and just annoying. She also probably didn’t notice that I blind copied everyone, so it wasn’t just like I was singling her out.

It’s sad when people can’t even read one- to two-line e-mails anymore and immediately read two out of ten words, choose to get mad about it, and then have to have someone else point out to them that they misread, misunderstood, and are just flat out wrong.

Bad karma

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I don’t know if it’s bad karma, if it’s some higher power telling me that these work trips aren’t good for me, or if it’s just really horrible luck, but this is the second time in two weeks that I’ve encountered a flight cancellation. I don’t even receive a reason for it this time. I originally had scheduled a direct flight from Atlanta back to New York this evening, and between back-to-back meetings this morning, I listened to a voice message from AA telling me that my flight got cancelled – no explanation, no nothing. Instead, I got re-booked onto a flight connecting in Charlotte, and instead of getting back home around 9:30, I wouldn’t be landing at LaGuardia until nearly midnight. Nothing seems to be working out quite well for me in the last two weeks.

I sat on my connecting flight from Charlotte to LaGuardia in the first row of economy in a middle seat, which I never get, but I succumbed to choosing it since by default, they were mean enough to put me in an aisle seat near the back of the plane. These are the moments when I actually remember why flying can be so terrible and why people hate it. It’s also the moment when I realize that I never would have been happy as a consultant. I mean in this situation, it’s only been two back-to-back weeks of work travel, and I’m already miserable and want it to end. If I had to spend 90 percent of my time traveling and living out of a suitcase for work, I’d probably quit after a month.

Hello again

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Somehow, I managed to sleep 10 hours last night. I actually woke up in time to head to the hotel gym, but I remembered seeing Ed happy vividly, so I decided to stay in bed to see if he’d come back. Unfortunately, what I thought would be a happy dream ended up being more of the past pain I keep repressing.

In my dream, I was at home again in my bedroom. I heard my dad talking to my mom in the kitchen. He’s having a very negative conversation with my mom during which he’s sharply criticizing someone. The more I listen, the more I realize he’s talking about Ed. “That kid is good for nothing,” my dad says to my mom in his harsh tone. “He’s not smart, he’s not polite, and he’s not anything. He’s just demented.”

As soon as I heard him call my brother demented, I ran out of my room and yelled back. “He’s not demented!” I screamed. “How dare you criticize and put down your own son! What kind of role model are you?”

It’s as though I am not there, though. I feel like I am a ghost because neither of my parents react at all to my yelling and even my presence. To them, I don’t seem to exist.

I went back to my room feeling helpless, unheard, and ignored. Out of nowhere, Ed came out of a corner and made eye contact with me, and I immediately got excited and ran up to him to hug him and hold him. From his eyes, I could tell he heard everything. He looked like he was full of despondency in his heart.

“It’s okay, Ed,” I whispered into his ear as I held him tightly. “Nothing he just said is true. He’s just lying. He’s full of lies and hate. Nothing that he said is true. I believe in you. I love you. Do you know that?”

But Ed doesn’t say anything. He just stands there as we hold each other. I rub his back and I smell that long-sleeved white shirt he’s wearing, a shirt that he oftentimes wore; it was like his default shirt. It smells just like him. It’s as though he’s really there with me, and we are really together.

It was a really terrible start to my morning. I still have these moments like this morning when I keep asking myself if he really is gone, and I get choked up remembering that this is my reality now – a life without him.

6am

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I woke up at 4:15 this morning to catch a 6am flight to Atlanta. I knew it was too early when the little food stands were still not open when I got past security and to my gate. When I arrived at 8:30am, I felt exhausted and like I hadn’t even slept the night. I was lucky to get early check in at my hotel and napped for half an hour before getting back to work before my meetings began in the afternoon.

I can feel myself getting older. I don’t always feel it or think I look it, but when I wake up at 4am these past two Mondays to get on a work flight, I feel miserable afterwards. Even now as I type this, I feel worn. My colleagues and I had an early dinner and got back to our hotel at 8pm, and I went straight back to my computer to get all these things done that I had no time to get done during the day. And two more packed and full days await me. I want to take one long nap.