In November of last year, I gave my elderly father an ultimatum due to not being able to contact him when his medical issues arose or when I had concerns about his living situation. He lives several hundred miles away from me, and there is no other family close by him that I can rely on for information. He was in the hospital a few times last year, and I was always left out of the loop quite simply because he refused to get a cell phone. I’d find out after the fact and would be unable to connect with his care team. I told him that he had a couple of options to help me help him. He could move in with me (definite recipe for divorce), move in with my brother (same divorce recipe there), go to a care home, or get a cell phone to keep with him. Not surprisingly, he chose the cell phone option, even though he had adamantly refused to get one for years.
I sent him an older but functional one of mine, complete with a SIM card, prepaid and ready to use. I was not actually expecting any sort of problems. In my opinion, a cell phone is one of the most straightforward tools to operate. I mean, eight-year-olds have and use cell phones. Certainly, an intelligent, educated 80-year-old should be just fine! He’s been using computers since almost the beginning of time. Insert big dramatic sigh here…
Right away, he refused to try to power it up. I got a text message on the first day that said 9qgb$ but didn’t hear anything else from him about it for a bit. I sent him videos on how to use it. I sent him published articles on cell phone operations. I sent him emails with my own instructions. I called (the landline) and was encouraging and supportive. Nothing worked. I finally set up an appointment with him to talk it through over the landline. This was progress! Right? No.
This may have been the shortest phone call I have ever had with my father. He turned the phone on, per my instructions, and I attempted to talk him through the process of simply looking at the apps that were installed. In less than thirty seconds, he’d managed to set off the stopwatch timer and could not get it turned off. He hung up on me after some choice words that I overheard through the infernal beeping, and the cell phone went into hiding for another couple of months.
He then decided to sign up for an elderly education class devoted entirely to cell phone usage. I beamed with pride when he told me the news (mind you, he got the cell phone in December. It was now February.) He was proving that he was willing to try. Apparently, a man that age has many appointments and obligations that have resulted in rescheduling the class at least three times to my knowledge. There may have been more. Was I being fooled?
I thought that if I perhaps called him on the cell phone, it would at least show him the basic steps of answering a call. Success! It worked! We had a real conversation, and he now knew how to answer a call. I was thrilled–for a couple of days. I received an email from him stating ‘one of the reasons the phone won’t work is that I don’t have a provider.’ I didn’t think that was correct since I had prepaid for him, but I responded that I would check. In this instance, he was right. I had prepaid for ninety days. The service had gone inactive because he didn’t turn the phone on, and the notification to add money was, of course, sent to the cell number.
I paid for more time and let him know he was all set to go to his class now. Should I have done this? Perhaps not. Now that he knows how to make a call, I hear from him more than I ever have. He calls to chat. Just chat, usually during my working hours. The other day, I was on a business video call with my boss discussing the issues I had been having trying to get my dad up to speed on cell phones and speak of the devil–dad called to chat. Since I neglected to hit mute, the boss heard me try to explain that it is not necessary to try to put one’s finger through the screen to get the phone to return to the home screen. In my dad’s words, “the phone is being weird.” There’s no polite way to tell your father that it’s not the phone that is being weird.
Part of me is now hoping that he has to reschedule his class a couple more times. Imagine how many text messages I will get once he learns to use messaging features. Or video chat. I gave him the phone for my benefit. You understand. Trying to assuage my guilt at being so far from him and not being available to help when needed. I wonder how much guilt I feel when I accidentally forget to add money to his plan again?
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