I thought I was lucky when I got on the cleared list for standby for an early flight back to New York this afternoon… until we approached the vicinity of LaGuardia Airport and the pilot announces that the weather is too tumultuous to land. Granted, the same thing happened to me yesterday en route to Chicago when we landed in Detroit, but this time, we were headed to Syracuse… and THEN to Buffalo because when we arrived in Syracuse, the storm clouds quickly got there, too. After a very turbulent flight, we landed in Buffalo and stayed there on the plane for over an hour. We eventually got back to New York, just over three hours after the scheduled time. And again, I have no one waiting for me, and no one checking up on me to see if I’m okay.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to really not have anyone at all that you care about who cares about you. Then, if you were to go missing, either on the streets of your city or on a train or in a plane, what happens then? Who’s your emergency contact to list – no one? Who is supposed to claim your body if you die? I guess in those cases, you just get buried, un-embalmed, in an unmarked grave with an unmarked stone in a barely identifiable cemetery. I wonder what it feels like to be that alone, that lonely.