CHAPTER 10
Personal Touch
While I was finishing this book, I had a very sad event happen in my life: I lost my dear mother. She was a wonderful person and taught me and my brother and sister so many lessons while she was with us. Even on her deathbed she helped me with yet another lesson. This one was on point to helping me with my constant pursuit of the virtual world and the use of technology. She would often tell me the stories that she would come across that discussed how technology and the virtual world created challenges with social connection, trust, isolation, and presence. Truth be told, she often found ways to tie my field of study to these reports.
I have often been challenged with the use of technology as a way to replace the richness of direct, face-to-face, real connections. As I put my thoughts together about how to write about the human perceptions and the VWE that I have studied about, there was and always will be the trade-off between using technology as a crutch and using it as a convenient way to communicate and say things that most likely would not be said face-to-face. It provides a way to say things to others that are mean spirited; it is a way to yell at someone without the immediate repercussions, and as we have unfortunately seen, it is a way to bully others. All of these actions have a negative effect on the parties participating. My mom and I often talked about this. My mother grew up in a time when technology was not available as it is today. She would often comment on the way people communicated and say, what is wrong that people don’t talk face-to-face anymore to solve their problems?
When she grew up and raised her family there was no Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, Skype, or any other way to communicate to each other than by sitting down and talking it out face-to-face. We had many family discussions at the dinner table when we all sat together and talked about what was going on in our lives. She, like many of her generation, also had a strong sense of pride where family matters were discussed in the family circle and not shared publicly with the use of the aforementioned technology. We discussed the pros and cons of “this new way of sharing personal information” that she considered private.
When my brother called unexpectedly to say that my mother had been rushed to the hospital, there was no way to get my immediate family to Virginia, where she was located. When my wife and I arrived at the hospital and found out that she was terminally ill and would most likely not make it through the night, we were shocked. What do we do? How do we tell our children that their grandmother would be gone within hours and there was no way they could see her again? With my daughter in Japan with her husband, who was severing in the military, and my son in South Carolina, which put him seven hours away, how would they say goodbye? Of course, there was the phone that they could use but now they could also use FaceTime. Not only did technology allow them to talk to their grandmother before she passed away, they were able to see her and I believe, most importantly, that she was able to see them. She smiled so sweetly as she talked and watched each of them tell her how much they loved her. Even while she had to deal with death knocking at her door being able to see her grandchildren through the use of technology was a very special gift. I do wonder what the feeling would have been without the ability to see each other and only talk. This is when the lesson of using technology not as a crutch but as a tool to help people experience as close to the real situation as possible came to light. She was showing me and ultimately giving me her final OK and understanding that she supported this new way.
As we stood around her while she prepared to pass on, we as a family used technology to give my children an opportunity to be with her and the rest of the family. We called both my daughter and my son and for the next several hours up to her taking her last breath they were there with her and us. We used FaceTime to allow them to share in the many stories that were told that day. They laughed with us, listened to the songs we played for her, and prayed with us during her final hours. They were there even though they were not physically with us. My mother got to see them, talk to them, and tell them how she felt while they were able to do the same. This was a beautiful situation and it is how technology is supposed to be used. It is supposed to help fill the gaps that exist in a world that places family in many different locations.
We were able to use technology to bring my family together when time and space would not allow it otherwise. We were not using technology at the table where we all sat to eat dinner together. We were not texting each other while we were in the same house just rooms apart. We were not using it as we drove distracted by it, or while we were out to dinner at a restaurant rather than talking to the people we were out to dinner with. We used it on this day to bring us together not to separate us.
As always, my mom had a lesson for me and the rest of the family: Use technology to connect and make the bonds of relationships stronger. Don’t use technology to hide behind developing real relationships and always believe that a strong relationship will take honest work. My mom showed us that day, her last day on this earth, to never lose or forget the power of the human touch.