How Technology Helped a Lonely Widow Reconnect

Diane: Hi Guideposts! I’m Diane Stark, this is my mother-in-law, Judy. We’re gonna talk about a story I wrote for Guideposts about how Judy learned to use technology to communicate with family members that live far away.

I noticed Judy becoming withdrawn after her husband, Larry, died in June of 2016. He needed a lot of care before he passed, and so she always had one of her children or one of her in-law children with her to help her care for him.

After he passed, we all kinda went back to our old lives and our jobs and everything, and she was a widow and kind of alone. And I noticed that she just was really struggling with remaining close to the family. We’d all pulled together for so long, and then everybody kind of went their own ways after he passed. And so we just really tried hard to look for ways to include her in everything that we were doing, and technology played an important role in that.

Judy: Some of my favorite apps on my phone are Pinterest, WhatsApp. I use online banking, and I like WeatherBug. WhatsApp has helped me keep communicating with my youngest daughter, who lives in Amsterdam. And the other, just the plain texting, I use for my other daughter, who lives in Texas.

There are still times I prefer talking, because I sometimes get lonely and I’d like to talk with my sons and daughters and daughter-in-laws, and my friends. A lot of my friends.

When my daughter, she usually sends me pictures of her dog, and she sent one cute one, when she put boots on him, so I really had a laugh about that. [chuckles]

Diane: That was very cute.

Judy: It was too cute.