Tomorrow, we’re leaving for New Zealand , the land of kiwi fruit and kiwi birds, endless green, turquoise bodies of water, and Lord of the Rings fame. Chris among others have called this the most beautiful country on earth, so I have very high expectations when we arrive that will need to be met.

Ed probably never thought I would take him to New Zealand. I suppose he was never really that curious about the world, so maybe he was one of those people who may not even know where New Zealand was on a map. We are planning to go canyon swinging, and Chris is planning to keep him in his zipped up pocket during the fall and swing. Queenstown is one of the adventure capitals of the world, and though Ed may have hated it when he was in our form, he has no choice but to jump with us now.

I had my first bout of allergies in my life when I came to Melbourne last December. In the last 27 years of my life, I’d never sneezed or wheezed or coughed no matter where I was due to pollen or flowers or grass. That was just a misfortune that my parents and Ed always had to grapple with that I did not. When they were sneezing and blowing their noses and battling watery blearly eyes, I was clear-eyed and clear-nosed (if that’s a word). So when I got here and immediately felt cold symptoms – runny and stuffy nose, coughing, phlegm – I just thought it was a cold and treated it as such.

So now, I am back in Melbourne for Christmas, and after spending a nice few hours outside for lunch in Chris’s friends’ backyard, I am a bit stuffy and runny, taking Telfast to soothe my little nose. My mom, being the mom she always is, warned me over the phone yesterday to bring a sweater or jacket everywhere I go, “because you don’t want to get sick again like you did last year!” I responded that it wasn’t a cold and that it was actually allergies. She had me on speaker phone, so in the background, my dad heard this and mumbles, “It’s not allergies. She’s never had allergies before!”

Yes, I’ve never had allergies before in San Francisco or Boston or New York or virtually any other place I’ve traveled to before. But Melbourne is a different place in a different hemisphere in a different part of the world. I’d never been here before and discovered something new about myself. And maybe if my dad decided to make the trip out here and were exposed to the pollen of the Australian northerly winds, he wouldn’t be saying that his little daughter having allergies would be an impossibility.

I guess that’s what happens. The more you travel, the more you learn about the world – and yourself. And when you don’t, in many ways, you are closed off from that world and the inner parts of yourself.

I’ve decided that coming to Australia in the winter months is probably not the healthiest thing for me when it comes to snacking. Pre-Chris, I was never much of a snacker, as when I did have food between meals, it was always fruit. Post-Chris, I have been exposed to lots of delicious but dangerous snacks, like Arnott’s Tim Tams, chocolate-dipped Scotch Fingers, and Barbeque Shapes, as well as the spicy and addictive bhuja or “mixture” that is ubiquitous in Indian families’ homes. These are chickpea and bean-flour-based snacks that are deep fried and seasoned with spice. It’s as normal as a place setting at the table. Nibble while you chatter away, and chatter and nibble away, we do.

The mixture we recently picked up for his mum in Dandenong was bought in varying degrees of spiciness. I’m sure if Ed were here, he’d probably eat an entire pack of this himself in a sitting and not even realize it. That’s the way Ed was – when you presented him with something tasty, he had little self control and would just keep eating and eating. I’m not quite sure if it was because the snack itself was so good, or if it was just because he loved the act of eating itself.

I saw Ed today. I’m not really kidding. I was in the bedroom here right after dinner at home with Chris’s parents, and when I came up to get dressed for our after dinner walk along the beach, I saw him from the corner of my eye staring at me from the next door neighbor’s front yard. I looked right at him and he saw me, and then when I looked again, he was gone.

Even though he’s no longer in the same form, I know my Ed is there watching over me. I don’t get to see him or talk to him the way I used to, but I can always feels him around, even all the way across the world and in the Southern Hemisphere. I miss him.

Chris and I are in the air somewhere above the Pacific Ocean, and I realized that we are actually losing Sunday in flight. We left New York on a Saturday evening and will arrive in Sydney and then Melbourne on Monday morning/afternoon. It’s always a bit funny to think about losing days, but gaining days when we come back to New York is always a really good feeling.

Bart has been sitting with us the entire flight. He’s been enjoying pretty decent meals, night-time snack bags with honeycomb chocolate, and delicious red wine made in Australia. Ed never had the chance to fly on a really good airline because the three times he flew were just domestic flights in the U.S., but now, he has to get used to all the traveling that Chris and I are doing since he’ll be joining us. These are the luxuries that he never got a chance to have in his human life that he gets now.

I’m currently sitting at the British Airways lounge at JFK airport, waiting for our flight to LA en route to Sydney and then Melbourne. I am surrounded by gold and red Christmas decorations (maybe the people who did the decorating were Chinese?), Christmas trees, and a calming fountain, not to mention trays and trays of gourmet finger sandwiches – this is like tea party heaven. United has a lot to learn about how to design and set up an airport lounge that is actually worth paying money for.

We’re going to spend Christmas with Chris’s family again. I guess this is what we will be doing every year for the foreseeable future. His family is like the family you always hear about but aren’t actually a part of – everyone genuinely gets along and looks forward to seeing each other for Christmas and Boxing Day – no drama, no gossip, no back stabbing, no holding onto stupid memories from the past. That feeling is very foreign to me because I cannot relate to it at all. The anticipation of seeing all your family in one place about it and being excited about it – it’s a total enigma. And then in some very odd way, sometimes when I think about it, I am a bit nauseated. Maybe that’s because I am envious that I can never have that feeling with my own family, even though his family is technically supposed to be my family now. But we all know it’s never really the same.

I remember telling Ed how functional Chris’s family and greater family was around Christmas, and he kind of chuckled last year because he responded, “well, that’s not anything like our family!” Ed via Bart will spend Christmas in Melbourne this year. He won’t be alone again. And he’ll be in a functional house.

Last night, I had multiple dreams that seem to have blurred into one big one. In one dream, Ed is sitting with me, but I know he’s not really his human form; he is visiting me in spirit form from heaven, but wants to fool me because he looks exactly like himself. Even after death, he still wants to play games with me. He tells me about what life would be like if he could do things all over again. He’d try to focus more, be a little more confident, take more chances. There goes Ed blaming himself. He spent the last few months of his life blaming himself for all of his life’s “failures” and why he was who he was until the end. I tell him it’s not all his fault, and that there were things out of his control that he could not have prevented. Ed internalized all the criticisms of his life and ended up believing all of them, even when they were far from the truth.

For a while, I was in denial that he could really contemplate suicide again. I remembered that time back in 2000 when he got into some trouble and got worried, so he went to see a psychic, who told him that the trouble would soon end, and he’d live a very long life. He was so sweet – even in his darkest moments, he still thought about me and asked her what my future would be like. Her vague answer was, “She will be just fine.” Stupidly, I had faith that there was some grain of truth to what the psychic said, so Ed would never try to do anything to end his life voluntarily ever again. I’m never trusting any psychic ever again.

It was a sad meeting with my dead brother because it made me wish yet again that I could go visit him from time to time; no one else would have to know. It would just be him and I, together alone as brother and sister, and no one could be there to harm him or criticize him or do anything that could have negative implications on him. I’d accept that I could only see him at certain times in certain places, and it would be our secret. I guess Chris and Crista could know. I don’t think Ed would mind that.

Chris has been indulging me this entire year with visits to some of the best restaurants in New York. Tonight was our last tasting menu of the year in our beloved city at the very classic French Bouley. Stepping into it was immediately redolent of apples, which lined the walls in neat rows in the entrance room. And once in the dining room, it was as though we were invited into a French friend’s old, sumptuous home with many rustic touches, massive French countryside paintings, gorgeous vintage-style, gold-rimmed plates, and freshly lit tall candles and bright purple orchids. What a way to end the year we have lived here in what I now call my second home.

It’s weird to look back on this year and see how much has happened. Chris and I have gone through a lot of things – ups and downs and departures from our companies, my entering a new company and slightly different marketing area, city and state-hopping to multiple U.S. cities, a couple of international stops, and of course, my own pains with my family and Ed and dealing with his death. 2013 was a very surreal year and will probably remain surreal every time I look back on it in the future. I’ll never fully grasp everything that happened or understand; even some of our travels seem like a blur to me, and when I go through our photos, I am reminded that yes, we actually did do x/y/z activity!

Ed lived a really short life, and I’ll never stop believing how unfair it was. I might get repetitive when I say this, but the only way I will preserve my brother’s life is if I ensure that I’m surrounded only by positive energy and people who can help make me better (as opposed to worse and stagnant). Next year, I have some things I want to do for him that I just didn’t have the emotional ability to do this year. I hope he will be happy with the choices I will make on his behalf.