I have taught my mom to use e-mail three times. Starting when she was in her late 60s, we went over the basics of Hotmail. We exchanged a few messages – hers were usually all in capital letters – but the correspondence died off when she accidentally clicked on her Trash folder and never figured out how to navigate back.

We tried the tutorial again when I visited the following Thanksgiving, then a couple of summers later, until my mom quietly disconnected her internet service altogether. “If someone needs to reach me, they can call me,” she said.