Unable to Concentrate

At 3:45pm on January 29th, 2020 I received a text message that stated, “sister (Madeline, a 91 year old nun, and my great aunt) just started morphine, they give her 24-36 hours”. As I looked down at my phone, my mind only read the key words, “morphine” and “24-36 hours”. I was in the middle of a conversation with one of my good friends while I was working in the photography lab in Mitchell Hall. I felt like I was in the movies, I looked up and my friends lips were fluttering, hands gesturing and I could not comprehend any of it. I just looked up, interrupted her, and said, “haha my great aunts gonna die within the next day”. We both stopped. She looked at me for a second in silence before letting out a half-laugh half-sigh at me with a worried look on her face. I had interrupted our pleasant afternoon conversation with death. Who wants that? Well that has interrupted my “adventures in higher education” for a few reasons. Last night it felt impossible to concentrate on my homework. This morning I had class and I feel like my professors words were appearing in front of me, but I was understanding very little. When I ate breakfast this morning I felt completely numb. You think it would get better after a day, but it did not because I woke up to a text time stamped at 2:45am, “sister passed away at 1:00am this morning, the funeral is on Tuesday morning”.