"Thankful for Communications" by Neita Geilker

“Hello, Grandmother,” came a sweet voice over the phone. Over a thousand miles away, but very distinct and clear. I am so grateful for a variety of connections that allow me to feel embraced by my distant family.

When both our children departed for distant locations—Emily to the US Virgin Islands and Eric to Charlottesville, we did not experience trauma, for we knew they were as near as our telephone and email, and often the airport—and now, via FaceTime and Zoom! And we knew we would be together again. We could even travel to their distant homes and satisfy our longing to see them—in their natural habitat.

Sadly, I have read stories, sometimes fictionalized, but often painfully real, where children left home leaving few or no tracks. I marvel at the bravery of parents in Ireland who wept as they said goodbye to their children departing the country for a better life during the potato famine knowing they might never hear from them again. Did they arrive safely? Are they surviving? Are they thriving?

Occasionally letters would arrive, letters sometimes proclaiming a success that was fiction. I think the parents must have survived through hope that things would work out for their children, hope that their own pain and sadness would be worth it. Children grieved as well, missing the warmth of home and family, arriving in a strange world whose language they frequently did not understand and where they often were not welcome.

When families traveled west in covered wagons, there was also painful separation. Messages sometimes got through, but only after months of waiting.

Don and I have experienced anxiety when communication was cut off.  In September 1995, we were on the phone with our daughter Emily while hurricane Marilyn was devastating St. John in the US Virgin Islands.  Inside their boarded-up house on a steep mountainside overlooking the ocean, she was telling us to listen to the howling wind when she suddenly interrupted herself to say in alarm, “Oh, I think our door is being blown in.”  The call was disconnected, and there was nothing for three worrisome days.  No telephone, no email—nothing except terrible headlines about the near-total destruction wreaked on St. John by the powerful storm. 

And then we received a message from the Red Cross telling us that she and her husband had survived unscathed.  Their neighbor was able to contact a passing cruise ship by using a VHF boat radio, and the cruise ship relayed information to the Red Cross and then to us.  What an incredible relief to finally hear they were okay, and their house was still standing!  It was six weeks before we heard directly and then only via a borrowed cell phone that bounced the signal from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.

I never want to take connecting for granted. It can make life endurable, even in a pandemic, and I am thankful that more and more people around the world are able to connect.