How Steve Jobs Saved My Dad

By now, the blogosphere is filled with stories about senior citizens who are using iPads or iPhones to keep up with their grandchildren.

But I can say truthfully that they saved my Dad’s life. No, he didn’t fall and use his iPhone to call for help and he wasn’t rescued from the bottom of some deep ravine while completing his ‘Bucket list.’

My Dad will be 91 later this year. He’s survived the death of his father on the eve of the Great Depression, and three shrapnel wounds in the War to End All Wars,  to send three children through college during 62 years of marriage to a woman he met on a blind date.

Maybe the depression he entered three years ago when my mother died was predictable but when it didn’t seem to dissipate and his eyesight deteriorated every phone call seemed to involve something about death and how he wanted to be with his wife.

But in 2010, Steve Jobs, introduced the iPad and several months later the iPhone 3.

My brother, who does technical support for living, is always an early adopter of technology, especially anything Apple related. So, when the new products came out, it allowed him to get a spiffy new phone and the ‘magical and revolutionary’ iPad.

He recycled his old phone to dad – who already had a cell-phone which he never used -  and on more than one occasion he brought his iPad to Dad’s house.

As you might expect, technology is a bit of a challenge to a 90 year old and in most cases when my brother brings over a new gadget, Dad gets frustrated and just gives up.

This time, he never gave either of them back. He pointedly refused to give the iPad back.

For the first time in years, since his eyesight began to fail, he could read the Boston Globe every day. Better yet, he’s learned how to download e-books and, as he notes, “I’ve read more books in one month than I did in the previous 89 years including school.” Both of them are better than large print books since he can make the type as large as he wants.

It’s not unusual to get a text from him when he’s visiting family in New York  or Florida and one particularly memorable trip with me, and my sister we were all sitting a lunch, deeply engrossed in texting messages to my brother rather than enjoying each other’s company. I’m not proud of my actions but the fact that Dad had joined right in, brought a smile to my face.

Now he can keep up with what’s happening with his my sister  in San Jose by reading the Mercury News, and with the latest catastrophe in San Francisco, by looking up SFGate.  He’s a regular on the New York Times website and reads the latest financial news at the Wall Street Journal.

He devoured all the Robert Parker, Spenser mysteries (mainly because Parker was from my home town and the books are all set in New England) and today he informed me that he’s on to Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.

We no longer have discussions about how his misses my mom, although he surely does, and he’s never bored or depressed as long as his iPad and iPhone are fully charged.

Thanks, Steve, Dad will text you when he has a minute.

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