Keeping in Touch with Home

One decision I made in September has really worked out well for me, and for my family and a few friends at home. We reserve an hour on Sunday evenings to talk and chat with each other. We all got webcams and signed up to the same service so we could be together. People come and go, just as they would if we were in a room together. It's just a casual hangout time where we can all be together. We talk about trivial things most of the time, like how someone has changed her hair, how someone's family had got a new bathroom, or how a friend's relationship has broken down. The odd time, either I have or someone at home has other things to do on Sunday evenings, so we reschedule if we can, or agree to give it a miss for a week -- in much the same way as we would if we were in the habit of actually physically getting together.

Here are the benefits. We all keep up kind of automatically about what's going on with each other, what's important at the time, and how we're all feeling. Things that wouldn't merit a special phone call or email or text just get mentioned as a matter of course because the other people are there and the togetherness is happening. As well, it reminds me that there is a world outside the campus here. University life is so all-consuming that sometimes it's easy to forget that!

And then if something comes up which really needs action, it doesn't come as a surprise. One example: I had a much-loved but very elderly Great Aunt, who went into the hospital. Because I already knew from conversations that had gone on for several weeks that she was getting very uncomfortable with cancer, I was able to reschedule things so I could take a couple of days off and go to see her one last time. I'd got ahead with some papers that had to be written, and also read in advance the online versions of a couple of lectures, enough to get my head around what they were all about. So I knew that I'd be ready for a test that was given the day after I got back.

Both my aunt and I cried when I was there in the hospital with her. We both knew it would probably be the last time. But she was so grateful and happy to see me, especially because she knew I'd travelled for several hours to come to see her. It was a hard time, but a beautiful time. Just as I left, she told me she didn't want me to come for her funeral: a waste of time and effort and money, she said because My mom, who was there to pick me up, heard this and we both promised that I wouldn't come and that she would explain that it was because I'd been quite firmly told not to.

Well, as it happened, her death came at a time I would have been mightily torqued and conflicted if she hadn't told me not to come home for it. It was a few weeks later, just as our semester's exams were beginning. You have to jump through lots of hoops here if you want to get out of doing them or to postpone them; even then it's not always possible.

Of course I was upset. But I felt a lot better because I was able to do what she wanted me to do and had told me to do: stay here and carry on with the exams. If I hadn't gone back a few weeks before to see her, I'd have felt lots of guilt no matter whether I'd decided to go to the funeral or not. I was so grateful to her because she'd released me from the dilemma, and it means my memories of her aren't, and won't be, clouded by the impossible decision I'd otherwise have had to make.

And I really do believe that the regular weekly webcam chats produced this result. Her situation became clear to me only gradually, and only gradually did I see and prepare for what I did when she went into the hospital that last time. If a sudden phone call had arrived and told me about it, for one thing it would have been a much worse shock, and for another, I probably wouldn't have been able to clear things away here to the point that I'd be able to make that important trip at the best time for me and for her.

Mind you, I think there's a danger of taking things to an extreme. There are people who talk to their mums or boyfriends or girlfriends all the time, or still worse, go home every weekend. These people are missing a lot of what University has to offer, not only socially, but also academically, because a lot of information comes from informal situations, and lots of things become clearer when a bunch of people beat them around together for a bit. But home is important too, and for me an hour or so on Sunday evenings is just right.