36

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Dear Ed,

Happy birthday – today you turn 36. The reason I am not that excited about this is a) you aren’t here anymore, so what does this really mean, and b) I’m in a moment where I kind of hate the world. I had some successful client meetings the last few days here in Atlanta, yet I still feel dissatisfied. I woke up on your birthday morning crying, thinking how upset I am that you are dead. I wrote an Instagram post telling my Facebook and Instagram world the meaning of Bart and how he represents you and how I want you to travel the globe with me. It feels so empty. All of that feels empty. People are commenting and saying what a great sister I am. Was I really that great, Ed? You know what I would prefer? If no one complimented me and told me I was a great sister while you were dead, and if you were actually alive and healthy and well and happy. I guess that is too much to ask for. Sometimes life really sucks. But you already knew that, right, and that’s why you decided to peace out. God, that makes me mad.

I don’t know why, but this year has been much harder for me to deal with than last year in terms of not having you. When the anniversary of your passing came and your birthday last year, I actually kind of had it together, and I wasn’t crying or anything. I felt like it, but I didn’t. This year, it’s really different. I feel like everything is triggering me to think of you and tear up, wishing you could have had a tiny piece of the privilege and happiness I’ve been able to have, and wishing that you could be on this earth with me again. There’s too much you didn’t get to experience, Ed. It makes me so upset when I think about it. I never got a chance to fully express myself to you, and I don’t know if I will ever really get over it. Sometimes, I just feel so lonely, like no one understands or cares enough. This donor drive is driving me crazy. I don’t want to take it personally when people don’t respond or donate, but I can’t help it. I almost feel like it’s an affront to you and what you mean to me. I just want you to be back, and it’s so hard some days. Everyone who can’t empathize in the slightest, I want them all to fuck off and go to hell and perhaps get hit by a truck. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? You’d get so mad at me if I said that in your living presence.

I miss you. It goes without saying, but sometimes, it just needs to be said. As human beings, we don’t say how we feel enough, which isn’t right because of how short life is. I wish I could have told you more, but now, all I have left is my occasional prayer to God, this blog, and my Instagram/Facebook posts speaking to you. I miss you. I love you. I have nothing else left to say now, but I hope you are well where you are and think of me occasionally, lovingly. I really wish my brother were here with me today.

Love,

Yvonne

 

Humanity

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Tonight, I hosted a client dinner for a party of 15 here in Atlanta, with two of my colleagues who traveled down from New York for the meetings we will be having these two days. And for the first time ever, I almost burst into tears in the presence of my clients while hearing one of their stories. Thank God I was able to maintain my composure.

One of the new employees hired on the analytics team at my client’s company sat next to me at dinner, and we were getting to know each other and each others’ life stories. He is quite an eclectic man: he came out to his parents at age 15, got kicked out of his Christianity cultish parents’ house, finished high school while living with extended relatives in a better neighborhood in Fort Worth, then joined the army for six years. He’s always had an affinity for numbers and for analytics and visual representations of everything, which is ultimately what brought him to my client. But the story he shared with me, which if I remember correctly, was from his experience after he left the army and was working for the government, touched me to a degree I have never felt before in my life.

He told me about how he was doing forensics work, and a body of a John Doe was brought in who was killed in combat. For days, they waited for family members, friends, anyone to claim him, yet no one did. What are they going to do? He thought. Because he had served in the army, the government ultimately paid for this man’s funeral, but when the funeral was scheduled, no one came… except my client and his then colleagues. The few of them came to the service, and were amazed that no one had showed up — not a single person. And this man still had no identity. He just couldn’t believe it, my client said. How could not a single person in the entire world not recognize or claim to know this man.. or not even show up to his funeral? He felt so hurt, to think that a human being could die and not have a single soul care or show up to his funeral on this earth.

He went back to the office and started looking over John Doe’s charts, and he thought, I want to memorialize this guy, this John Doe. How can I do this? How can I do something small in my own life to remember this man that no one else wants to remember? I want him to know that someone did remember him, and that someone will be me. He thought for a while, and remembered he’d always wanted to get a tattoo on his body, something that was large and all over his arm and maybe even spreading out to his back, something that was meaningful. And so he decided to take this man’s DNA sequence and have the entire thing tattooed on him, from his left forearm all the way up his shoulder, and down the middle of his back. He already had part of his arm revealed with his short-sleeved shirt, and so he showed me part of the DNA sequence and the detailing.

I could feel my eyes watering when he shared this story with me. “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said to me, smiling and laughing. “This is the sort of thing that people in my circles do all the time! But as I meet more and more people, I’m realizing that maybe it’s not really ‘normal’ after all. But I figured – if no one else will remember him, I can, right?”

This man’s humanity really touched me. I had to try really hard to fight back tears as he told me this. Who in the world would do something like this — remember a guy he had absolutely no connection with in life, feel sorry for him because no one came to his funeral to “claim” him, and then decide to “remember” him by tattooing his entire DNA sequence on his physical body? He didn’t want this stranger to be forgotten, so he’s literally stamped him on his body, which it will be on forever. I told him that I found his actions incredibly endearing and admirable to a level I’ve probably never heard of before.

It’s almost always a common nightmare people cite — who will come to my funeral when I die? How will I be remembered, if at all? This John Doe will be remembered by my client forever.

 

Hotel room surprise

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I checked into my hotel room tonight at the W Midtown Atlanta to find a surprise on the vanity counter waiting for me. It was a bottle of California chardonnay in an ice-filled silver bucket, and a small plate of delicately arranged petit fours. With it came a hand-written note by the W concierge, thanking me for my 10th stay at a Starwood Hotels property, and congratulating me for reaching this “milestone” and hoping I will enjoy my loyalty perks.

I was pretty shocked when I saw these gifts waiting for me, and even more shocked when I read through the hand-written note. But then, I honestly started feeling a little guilty for my privilege. I’ve never stayed at a Starwood property unless it’s been for work, with one exception for the time I was in Philadelphia for a pleasure trip, and I happened to get a good deal at a Sheraton through Hotwire. Starwood hotels are pretty terrible value, and the hotels are almost always very expensive. I mean, for $250/night, you don’t even automatically get Q-Tips and cotton balls in your vanity kit; in fact, you get no vanity kit and have to request it.

And then I thought about my brother, and how he’s only stayed at nice hotels on the evenings of two of his cousin’s weddings, when he got a free hotel room all to himself. Those were the only nights of his life he ever to got to enjoy a spiffy hotel room. I only wish Ed got to enjoy even a fraction of the privilege I have had in my short life.

Afternoon dessert

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Today, my good friend’s sister met me in the West Village for to catch up over dessert. She lives with her sister, my friend, her brother, and their parents in Little Rock. They’re the only people I know who live in Little Rock… and actually enjoy it.

She told me that since my friend got treated for cancer and now that it’s gone, she’s actually become even more of a recluse. She doesn’t really spend time with any friends at all unless they are her sister’s, and she’s become more clingy to their mother. We’re 29 years old. This is definitely not a good sign. She tries to avoid all driving despite the fact that she lives in an area that necessitates a car. Little Rock is not anything like New York City with public transit.

I always thought that after some life-altering experience, whether it’s a death of someone very close to you, or getting treated and getting over a life-threatening disease, we’d be forced to make major changes in our lives and outlooks, and hopefully for the better. Sadly, for my friend, whether she wanted to share it with me or not, she hasn’t.

Aggression

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Last night, I dreamt I was at my parents’ house, sitting on the couch with Ed next to me. My parents are sitting on the opposite couch, and one of my best friends is also in the room. Suddenly, my former (verbally abusive) boyfriend from my college years walks in, and he plops himself on the couch next to me. I’m wondering, who the hell invited him here?

And as I’m thinking this, my mom starts discussing the will that she and my dad have finalized. She says that they’ve decided to evenly split everything between Ed and me, but with Ed’s portion, I have control over how he chooses to use the money and inheritance left to him. The reason for this is because of Ed’s mental illness. He’s not fit to make decisions on his own and needs my assistance. Ed gets really angry and starts yelling at them, saying that he’s an adult; he should be allowed to make his own decisions, and that he will be responsible enough to decide for himself. My dad interjects and starts calling him stupid and all kinds of other criticisms. I yell at them to stop criticizing Ed, and that this topic is really inappropriate in front of people outside of our family. My friend and the ex are oblivious. It’s as though they don’t even realize that there is an argument happening right in front of them. No one is listening to me. Our parents continue to attack and put down Ed and ignore my pleas to stop. I get so heated that I stand up and kick both of my parents in the head one by one, and they both stop yelling and fall to the floor and hit their heads.

Even though I was scared in my dream that I could have killed both of them by kicking them in the heads, it actually felt like such a relief to take out some aggression on them. There have been too many times to count where I have yelled and defended my brother to no avail, but none that would have made such an impact as physical violence like this.

Wedding attendance

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It’s amazing. I just got an e-mail from my aunt, who is my dad’s younger sister, saying that she already had her time off request approved for the last two weeks of March next year. What this means is that she will not only be able to attend my wedding, but she is actually planning to come. She’s really only made the effort to attend one of my cousins’ weddings, which was in San Francisco, so clearly very convenient for her. The other two weddings, which were in Las Vegas and then in New York, she did not show up for. In fact, she didn’t even RSVP “no” to either invitation. She simply never came. When asked after the fact why she wasn’t able to come, she said that she “had to work.”

I don’t know if I should be flattered that she’s actually making the effort to come to mine, or worried that she is coming and may make a scene.

Management training

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I’ve spent the last three days in trainings and conferences. The first two days were for my company’s sales conference, and today was designated as management training day, where everyone in our company who is either a manager or a manager-in-training had to sit in on an all-day work shop on how to improve ourselves as supervisors of others. While a lot of the tips were very useful in terms of the usual known things (e.g. when pointing out an area where the employee can improve, make sure you don’t use the word “but” as a connector, and instead use “and” or just eliminate a connector completely), a lot of it ended up coming across as very generic. For example, the last session of the day included us identifying “problem employees.” These people were labeled things like “the criticizer” or “the one who goofs off/wastes time.” The problem with these labels is that as most human beings are, we’re multifaceted people and workers. Chances are, there are very few people who just fit into one of these categories; we all kind of embody a lot of these qualities, just at different times and in different circumstances. And just because someone may spend a lot of time socializing in the office and seemingly “wasting time” doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t meet her deadlines or comes to meetings late. The workshop presenter’s advice was to be as specific as possible when giving feedback and managing people, yet her presentation just felt too general, without enough complex real-life situations. It’s almost as though she is not practicing what she preaches herself.

Two years later

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Two years later after the death of my brother, I am finally coming to terms with the dysfunctional relationship between my cousins, who are all brothers, and the relationship they have with me. For one of them, the relationship is pretty much non-existent unless someone dies. With the second, it’s superficial and we only talk about surface things, and with the third, well, it revolves around his young son. I’ve finally learned to accept that I will never have the relationship I wished we could all have as adult cousins, and I’ve stopped taking the things they do personally. It only took about 29.5 years to get to this point.

In two weeks, one of these cousins, who lives in Brooklyn, will be going out to visit San Francisco for the first time since Ed’s funeral, which is over two years ago now. This time, he’s bringing his wife and son. He texted me yesterday and today to let me know that despite the very much in advance notice he gave his two brothers, his brother who lives in Redwood City and has a wife and two kids has let him know he has no time to see him. He’s just too busy, he said. There was a lot of needless and fruitless back and forth. Finally, it took a ‘secret’ conversation when he called my Brooklyn cousin to squeeze in a quick lunch together. His wife was not with him when this conversation took place.

Two years ago, I probably would have thought about this for days and thought about how stupid my Redwood City cousin is, how he lacks balls and how stupid it is that his selfish wife controls his life and doesn’t even want him to see his own brother, who he sees about once every two years at this point. Today, I laughed it off and decided it wasn’t worth a single thought, other than that I am so happy that my own life doesn’t have even a tiny bit of that type of dysfunction.

Reading to soothe

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I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night. I kept tossing and turning, flipping my pillow, looking at the clock as each hour would pass by. When I eventually fell asleep, I dreamt that I was back in my bedroom in San Francisco, sitting cross-legged on my bed while facing Ed, who had a large hardcover book open in his lap. I felt miserable, and I had asked him to read me passages from a book that would provide me hope and inspiration. He read passage after passage of who knows what large book it was, and with each passage he finished reading to me, I asked him for another one, and another one, and another one. I didn’t want him to stop. He didn’t seem impatient, though, and continued to read each time I asked him to continue and find another one that would be inspiring. In the back of my mind, I was scared that if I told him I was okay and that he didn’t need to find me another passage to read that he would close his book and leave the room, and ultimately leave me forever. I couldn’t risk that. I needed to keep holding onto him. If I could still hear his voice, I knew I would be okay.

Lonely night

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I’m having a bad day today. Nothing “bad” actually happened, per se, but I felt this overwhelming sense of loneliness when I woke up, and throughout the day, even when I had people around me, I felt so lonely. Even though I can be quite outgoing and from the outset seem to be an extravert, I actually think I’m more of an introverted person naturally. I’m usually very comfortable being alone, thinking about my surroundings and life in general. I like doing things that people do when they are alone: reading, organizing, perusing recipes and researching ingredients for a next dish, scrapbooking. These are one-person activities generally. But today, all of this annoys me. I don’t really want to do any of this, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like going out of my way to speak to someone or anyone. Today is just a dissatisfying day because of my mood. The 90-plus degree weather, for whatever reason, did not help it. I just want to sleep today.