I'm composing offline again, in the smoking area of the Richard L. Jones, Jr. International Airport. The smoking area reminds me of a bus station. I imagine that I stick out here, with my laptop and my black Chucks, but I'm kidding myself...I'm just like the rest of these bozos.

What I hadn't anticipated about my aunt's deathwatch was her total lack of lucidity. She lies there, frequently sleeping and grunting in her sleep. When she wakes, her eyes are either slit & sleepy & looking at nothing in particular, or they're wide & startled, as if she'd been physically shaken awake. In this state, every return to consciousness is a surprise; she's surprised by who is there and who is not, by the slow march of shadows & sunbeams across the lemon yellow walls and by the fact that, for all her fugue state, she is still there to regain consciousness.

I came to Oklahoma hoping to set things right with my aunt. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for letting my student loans slip, for letting the same creditors who hound me hound her. I wanted to apologize for not keeping in closer touch, for letting my relationships in Oklahoma, which once were very strong, just slip away. I wanted to explain to her that...well, that I felt she was disappointed in me. Here she was with a good & loving marriage, one that has seen her through not just one, but now two bouts with cancer not just unscathed, but strengthened. She had followed her vocation (and I mean vocation in the most primal sense of the word: a calling, probably from some power much larger and stronger than herself) without swerving or deviating. She became a pillar in this small, rural community. She remained true to herself, to her family, to her ideals and was recognized throughout her surroundings for it. She was important to so many people. And she made a fucking difference in their lives.

Once, I know it, she had the same hopes for me. Me, a 34-year-old assistant manager of a videogame store trailing a string of broken relationships behind me like Godzilla festooned with burning bridges. Me, who had dropped off the face of the Earth and was holed up in a studio apartment in Milwaukee, screaming at his cat for tearing down his connection to Final Fantasy XI.

I wanted to apologize for what I had become. And I wanted her to tell me that I would be all right.