It’s been a busy week. In the class I am teaching for pre-service BEd students we discussed adaptive /assitive technologies and how new, emerging hardware and software can level the playing field for so many students. It was kind of prophetic.
I used the example of my mom. Since being disgnosed with ALS almost three years ago, my mom has taken advantage of various communications technologies to maintain her dignity and quality of life, even as her body failed her.
The first manifestation of ALS with mom was in her voice. She quickly lost the ability to speak, so phone calls were out. She adopted 21st century strategies to stay in touch. She learned how to email, share photos, etc. so that she could maintain contact with her many, many family and friends.
In fact, her circle of friends grew – just like our young people today. She became an advocate and a counsellor for many people in similar situations – people she had never met who lived thousands of miles away! She became a 21st century digital immigrant.
My mom was a literacy champion. She loved reading and teaching. She taught me to read at a very early age. I remember watching her teach adults from our community to read at our kitchen table through the Laubach program She was keenly interested in what I was doing with technology and literacy. She loved to learn. I always said that she should have been a teacher, but she instead chose to remain home and raise three children. After we kids had all left the nest, she became a teacher’s aide at the school where my dad taught.
Through all her struggles with ALS, God blessed her. As her body failed inch by inch, he kept her right hand strong. Mobility in her “mouse hand” allowed her to maintain contact with us. Her emails became shorter, but I know she loved receiving notes and pictures from all her family and friends – new and old!
She was a woman of tremendous faith and courage. While it took tremendous effort, she wrote me a note a couple of days ago. “Jesus loves me and you, and he will take care of us”. Her faith inspired so many.
There’s a new angel looking down on my family today. My mom slipped quietly and peacefully (thankfully) into heaven as she slept early this morning, my dad asleep by her side.
This weekend I am with my family as we celebrate her life. It will be filled, I am sure, with tears and laughs. But for me, it will be filled with memories of a beautiful, faithful servant of the Lord who, in the words of Il Divo’s tribute, “made me all the things I am, and all the things I’m not.”
I love you Mom.
technorati tags: education, technology