Not mine to watch anymore.”

I have thought since about Darlene’s question — how is it that nobody knew? — because it is the question at the bottom of so much of the quiet suffering in this world, and the answer is worse than cruelty.

Nobody knew because everybody assumed somebody else did.

Darlene assumed the Sunday calls were enough, and that if they weren’t, surely a neighbor, or the town, or somebody was keeping an eye.

The town assumed the family was handling it.

And underneath all the assuming sat me, the actual somebody, invisible in a mail truck, doing the seeing so quietly and so reliably for so long that everyone up the chain got to feel their loved one was watched over without any one of them having to do the watching.