It came through during one of those awkward pauses that overcomes you in the line at Gateway Tire.

Lost in my Saturday in Shreveport, I was suffering a quick and expensive tire replacement for the drive back to Ruston that evening.

My dad, who was humoring my poverty in his good-natured, reluctant way by signing for the $173.69 I now owed, swiveled and glued himself to the T.V. in the waiting area, where I noticed he wasn't the first or only one to do so.

"The Associated Press is announcing that the Pope is dead, and Fox News can now confirm Pope John Paul II has died this evening in his apartments at the Vatican É"

I am a lapsed Catholic, and it's OK. Through the mirror of his passing, I see it.

It's been a long time that I've waited in silence. The pontiff's death hummed somewhere inside of me. The fire of religion lives there, so do boyhood memories.

I focused on the bad as a kid; the melodrama of a stuffy Shreveport upper-crust at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in my hometown's mysterious downtown. That's my fault.

It's hard to shake, though, so I find a personal spirituality and aim toward a general sense of tranquility with others, in my own way, which makes me happy. It's OK.

My parents don't truly understand, but accept it.

In the eyes of my church, I'm a frozen wasteland, stuck somewhere between my first communion and confirmation and it's OK. Probably in the enlightened eyes of ole' John Paul II, too, from his own life after death.

"John Paul II, the 264th pontiff, traveled more and beatified more people than any pope in history. He was the first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years, and the first ever Polish pope. He traveled to more than 120 countriesÉ"

The information poured out of the T.V. and into us there, in the lobby of Gateway Tire. Even the Texas Rangers held their hats when they heard during a game Saturday, or so I've read since then. If I'd had a hat, it would have been off.

My dad looked back at me knowingly, with an almost imperceptible weight in his eyes, when I asked him who was up.

He said any man who pretended to know who will get the gig was lying.

I know that moment in Gateway Tire, mulling over the weight in my father's eyes and the loss of a spiritual force, will stay etched on me.

I saw it and felt it pass through me, and knew no real difference from my father, who I noticed gingerly fingering the work order for my tires.

He was still holding it, absentmindedly.

The Pope puts it in a special perspective for a lapsed Catholic, too. Lapsed, but OK.

Nick Todaro is a senior journalism major who serves as editor for The Tech Talk. E-mail comments to nst005@latech.edu.