I don’t know how long the message had been sitting there in her Inbox, quietly announcing itself as unread. 

If truth be told, Joyce’s somewhat non-committal relationship to technology still makes me think that it had been there for a while and that she had, for some considerable time, been one click away from a very different kind of life.

And how she wished that life was different.

Born to ordinariness, with no apparent talent to transcend the suburban sprawl that she called home, Joyce soon found herself a young adult, clinging to the language of godliness.  Jesus was her friend now and, unlike most of the people who lived on her estate, she was set to inherit a mansion – either in this life or the next.

Forty years and several children later, I could hardly say that life had been kind to Joyce.  Most of the people she had known on the estate had moved on.  None of them kept in touch, except for the occasional Christmas card. 

‘Jesus is for life, not just for Christmas’, she would always insist in a distinctly disapproving tone. 

And, most of the time, I know she meant it.

Joyce had a habit of reading the world literally – and everything was black and white.  So when she happened upon the email for the first time and read the tragic story of this Nigerian prince, whose god-fearing father had been killed in a tribal battle, she could not help but be moved and feel some affinity with her brother-in-Christ.

It was only natural (to her at least) that she downloaded the attachment.

And that’s when the virus struck.

It wasn’t obvious at first.  But often that’s the way these things work.  It takes a while for the first signs of corruption to show.

The first signs were shocking, at least to begin with.  Joyce had never noticed this inclination in her to be curious about the forbidden fruits on the top shelf of the local newsagent.  She could not understand why now, after so many years of puritanical resistance, her eyes would involuntarily turn towards these glamorous images of women and men.

She knew that, by giving in to these unfettered emotions, she was at risk of losing the deposit she had laid down, over so many years, on her longed-for mansion.  ‘But then again’, she would mutter under her breath, ‘why build bigger barns and store up treasure for a rainy day in heaven’.

Her growing confusion between scripture and everyday proverbs was becoming awkward. 

Indeed, as the weeks went by, it was as if the pieces were all there but she had no longer any idea as to how to fit them together.  Nothing was black or white, right or wrong, any more – just an endless sea of grey.

If she had been a computer, you might have said at this point that Joyce’s operating system had been compromised.  The endless series of random events that made up the contents of her life no longer made sense.  There was no meta-narrative to hold the story of her life together.

It was her inability to recall huge sections of her life, though, that eventually drove her to consult a doctor.  Every time she tried to access those moments that had made her who she was today, she explained, it was as if the path to this personal archive had been suddenly and permanently erased.

Day by day, she was literally – if not physically – fading away.

The doctor had seen this kind of thing before.  It was not within his power, though, to recover what had already been lost.  As sensitively as he knew how, he simply broke the news that there was nothing more that he could do and that, in time, she would lose every part of herself to this all devouring Eraser.

Today, you will find Joyce sitting in the corner of the hospital ward.  She no longer knows her own name, nor responds to those around her.  Jesus is still her friend, but without her treasured stories, she is having second thoughts about that mansion.

Joyce is still one click away from a very different kind of life.  But what she wouldn’t give to be the same as everyone around her? 

After all, any kind of story is better than no story at all.