My aunt Teresa's outside smoking, she said she's heard it all before and she doesn't need to again. Which is fine, I'd be the same way too. I wish I smoked, I would have rather been outside with her. I don't deal well with this sort of thing. I can't even say it out loud because saying it would give it confirmation. That's it, I'm still in denial.

I'm going to lapse into every single cliche about this. I'm trying hard not to.

She looked so tired and frail and sad but trying to keep a hopeful face at the same time. At the dinner table with us is my mother, a thirty-three year old bachelor, my uncle Aman, and her husband, who seemed to have sprouted a path of white hair from his temple to his scalp overnight. We've bottles of wine and a bowl of fruit. I'm thinking, This is wrong. This isn't what I expected. I don't know what I thought was going to happen, but it wasn't this, sipping Beringer Zinfandel and the conversation being

"...with that treatment, there's usually a 72% chance of recovery."
"...at least we caught it early."

it might as well have been

"...this weather better clear up soon, or I'm moving to Florida."
"...Kohl's is having a sale."

I was ready to cry; instead I have salmon pushing down my throat to make my tear ducts forget that they were to well up. Don't like the Beringer? There's five more different kinds of wine to drink down the pain with.

Surreal, I'm thinking, this is surreal. I'm watching an American Beauty knockoff, and pretty soon, someone is going to throw this plate against that wall and scream. That someone is going to me.

But it never happened. I wish it did. I was pretty much silent throughout the entire time. What was I to say? "I'm sorry" doesn't cut it. "I'm devastated" is too dramatic. That high verbal score on the SAT means jack shit at the end of the day, because when it comes down to it, I revert back to primal mode.

Hug.
Grunt.
Retreat back to cave.
Wait for daylight.

I'm still waiting.