THE MORNING REPORT

Keeping tabs on our father has unexpected benefits

What started as a simple security measure for the writer’s aged father has unexpected benefits.

When my mother passed away a few years ago, my oc togena r i an father was left alone in the large house that they had shared for 50 years. Without her to watch out for him, he worried about who would help him if “something happened”.

He has a wonderful circle of friends in town who phone and invite him out, and an emergency call button. But, as my sister and I live in other states, we hit on the idea that Dad could send us an email every morning when he awoke. Thus was born the Morning Report.

He’s usually up by the crack of dawn, and his half a dozen or so sentences are waiting in my inbox when I wake up, despite the two-hour time difference. If there’s no email, I call him, or my sister does, to make sure everything is fine. (Sometimes he’s having computer problems or decided to sleep in.) The reports have become more than a daily check, though: they’re a diary of sorts, a planning tool, a catalyst for more extended conversations, and a source of insight into his life.

Through them, Dad tells us about his daily routines. He might be heading to the supermarket for bananas, going to his cardiac-rehab exercise class or having lunch with friends. I find the repetitive cycle of his activities – current-events discussion group on Tuesday nights, Rotary Club on

Wednesday afternoons and coffee with friends after church on Sunday morning – reassuring.

Sometimes he slips in cryptic teasers. For example, recently he told us, “I’ve climbed halfway up Mount Washington!” Given his age and distance from New Hampshire, such a hike was unlikely. I was befuddled for a day or two until he reminded me he was working on a hooked rug with a scene of the mountain.

Each email closes with “All my love, Dad”. When my mother was alive, that sentiment was normally reserved for her. Now that she is gone, he shares those feelings and his experiences with us. For me, what started as a simple security measure has spawned a deeper closeness. I’m grateful my father is still able to manage his computer and the internet. I know the day will come when he’ll no longer be able to write the reports, and we’ll have to find other ways to keep tabs on one another. Until then, they are our way of knowing that another normal day has begun.

For me, what started as a simple security measure has spawned a deeper closeness