I am sitting at an airport watching people in the final moments before their loved ones arrive or depart. The are pacing, nervous, looking at one another,touching and not touching. The emotion is intense. A woman, speaking Spanish, is running in circles trying to gather family members together for a goodbye. Her voice is high-pitched. When the final moment comes before boarding, she wraps her arms around her son,giving him a powerful embrace that should protect him until he returns. A grandmother and grandson stand at the rail where i am waiting; the people who are supposed to pick them up are late. Two ladies, next to them but unrelated, look up and down the corridor as if scaninig an open sea. A mother holds a baby as she kisses her husband. Tears dampen her cheeks. The moment is charged. At Gate 13,the arrivals are just coming ing " I see her. There she is. " Just as poignant , the arrivals fold into the mix of people as if they have been missing ingredient. There are tears and smiles , pure delight ringing in the laughter of seeing someone who has been gone. I sit , glancing at my book , waiting for my turn to leave , alone because the ones i love have a different schedual from mine , and the one i am going to see , a daughter , is at the other end of my journey. I think of other departures and arrivals. I recall seeing my daughter , the daughter i am now going to visit , coming down that narrow corridor with her backpack slung on one shoulder , her overstuffed carry-on cradled in her arms , her headphones making her oblivious to the stream of people flowing along with her. She was in her first year at university coming home for a holiday in November -- the first time since August. I wrapped myself around her as if she had been lost to me. Today my flight is two hour late. The book i am reading is not as interesting as the people leaving and coming , coming and leaving. A little boy about five is meeting his grandfather for the first time. He looks up and up at the face of a man who is not that tall , except to a child. Joy shines down and up , and i am wondering how one would capture this moment in words or on film. When my flight is finally called , i gather my books and carry-on. Since there is no one to see me off , i do not look back to see where i have come from. Instead , i think of my husband at work wondering if i have left yet , and my daughter at the other end wondering the same thing. As i head toward the plane , i find myself remembering yet another arrivat and departure. When i was a newlywed , my 91-year-old grandfather died. We had been very close , and one evening , returning from his funeral , i arrived at the airport crying. My husband of only a year was waiting at the gate to take me in his arms. Because of my tears , everyone was looking at us , but i didn't care. Somehow the emotion i felt seemed not at all out of place for the airport. Life needs to be this important all the time. I wish all the people who went on a journey could come back to find someone waiting for them. I also wish they could leave with someone to see them off. I think of my grandfather and realize that if dying is like this , a passage , then i am unafraid.