Thinking about not knowing

Yesterday I shut my computer down around 9:30 in the morning to prepare for a last minute trip to Fort Wayne to take my daughter-in-law to a doctor. I suppose we got back about 3 pm and I puttered around and then went off to the nursing home. When I got home, I turned the computer back on and not very carefully looked at my email. I didn’t see the message my cousin Glenda had sent at 10 am that her sister (the cousin I had just seen last week – the one who had bought me lunch at the Blue Gate Restaurant in Shipshewana) had suffered a recurrence of a medical condition.

I didn’t see that message until this morning. So all day yesterday this was going on and I was totally unaware. I had even thought about Susie last night – but never in the terms of illness. I was thinking of the upcoming play Glenda is directing at the college where she teaches.

Then, BAM, this morning I am no longer in the dark. Yet all that time – almost all of yesterday – the news was in my mailbox. It existed – this potential for knowing what was going on – but I was oblivious. It seems odd to me, maybe a little eerie . . . unsettling.