In this Easter season, words fail

I spent Good Friday evening on the phone with my mother, trying to help her master Zoom technology. During these disrupted days, I’ve been talking with her daily on FaceTime, but I had a vision to connect her with the whole family over Easter weekend.

Like many frail elderly people, my mother lives in a facility and has been sequestered in her room, unable even to enjoy meals with her friends. Still, she’s bearing up well. She was born into the Great Depression and is tougher than she looks. She soldiers through my instructions about “icons” and “apps” and “links,” bravely using words she does not comprehend. She does understand that when she touches certain configurations, things open on her tablet like magic. Until they don’t. Until the words disappear from the screen, or the sound won’t play, or the colorful wheel spins. Then I tell her to press the home button and we try again. The hours we spend struggling to establish this new connection feel as sacred as any I have ever spent on Good Friday.

The elderly are much on my mind. My mother-in-law is also living in a facility far from us—or she was until the day before Good Friday, when she was admitted to the hospital with a bad cough. By a trick of the calendar, Good Friday also happened to be her 87th birthday. She spent it in an isolated room awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test. Although she has a lung condition and depends on supplemental oxygen, our far-flung family prayed that she had pneumonia. Only pneumonia.