Remembering: New Technology

Once I landed in the States again, my incentive grew for making sure that those of us over here could communicate with her in Austria. Stephen had helped Dagmar install a Skype phone, now I really needed to use it. Here was an early success, on 3/27:

I spoke with Dagmar this morning and she said Oma was having a very good day. Oma ate breakfast by herself today. As I was on the phone, Oma started lunch. Attached is a set of images from today’s lunch. Oma eating. That is a wonderful sight to me.

It was really wonderful to be able to talk with Dagmar and Oma this way. We had also set up a frame in Oma’s room that rotated through pictures family could add to using a Flickr tag.

One of my sisters noted:

Mom’s been a little harder to catch since Natalie returned, but I have caught her once or twice on Skype to check in.

Apple was about to release the iPad as well. We had decided that Mary, Nate, Alex, and I would hold a “biggest loser” contest with the winner winning an iPad, but that would be a 3G iPad not even due out for another month. So I unilaterally decided to buy a wifi iPad and sell it in Austria at the tail end of my next visit. I really wanted something I could use to both communicate, share pictures, and read on while sitting with Oma. I’d put in my order just before leaving Vienna, now I was just hoping it would ship in time.

This post is part of my Remembering Oma series, which recounts the weeks I spent with Oma in 2010 as she died at home. Previous: Leaving Oma Behind. Next: Remembering Apart.