Skype: One Of The True Blessings for 21st Century Mothers

My husband and I live in Virginia, and yet almost all of our relatives live in Colorado or Oregon. Suffice to say, that’s a difficult arrangement especially now that we have kids. So thank God for Skype. Almost every night just before dinner we’re Skyping with one set of grandparents — who frequently have other relatives over to join in the fun. My two- and three-year-olds dance and sing for their grandparents, or maybe make pretend meals for them in their toy kitchen if they’re feeling up to it. The technology is imperfect, and there are the occasional hiccups with dropped calls and the video freezing, but on the whole it’s a real blessing.

I was reminded how grateful I should be for Skype after reading this story about a terminally ill mother who could only attend her daughter Ashley Broering‘s wedding via Skype. They brought two laptops along to the wedding so she could see her daughter from the hospital:

Ashley did her best to deal with the euphoria of the moment along with the sadness of her mother’s situation. The familiar, smiling face on the computer screen helped ease her emotions.

”I had a little freakout moment right before I walked down the aisle,’’ Ashley said. ”I started crying, and I just told myself that if I could just get down the aisle and see [the groom] Beau and see her, I would be OK.’’

”When I first found that day that her mom wasn’t going to be there, I already felt emotional about it just thinking about what it would be like if my mom hadn’t made it to my wedding,’’ said Andrea Boettcher, Ashley’s friend and the wedding photographer. ”I really tried to put it aside and not think about it too much, but when Ashley came down the aisle, her face and her looking at her mom on Skype, it was very emotional.’’

They even set up one laptop so that wedding guests could put on headphones and talk to the mother of the bride throughout the reception. Two days after the wedding, Ashley’s mom started slipping into a coma. She died 18 days after the wedding, and her daughter remains convinced that she hung on because she knew she would get to see the wedding. In this case, technology really was a blessing for everybody involved in the wedding.

Photograph by Andrea Boettcher. To see more pictures by this photographer go to: http://www.coilyphotos.com/