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The lesson plan, such as it was, went like this. Turn on the laptop. Open the browser. Click the email. Read the email. Reply to the email. Close the laptop. Five steps. I'd written them on an index card in big letters and taped it next to the trackpad. My dad looked at the card the way he looks at assembly instructions. Like it was a personal insult. "I know how to turn it on," he said. "Great. Turn it on." He turned it on. He'd been turning it on for three years. Every visit, same thing, and then somewhere between "open the browser" and "click the email" the whole thing would go sideways and he'd say, "I don't need this, your mother did all this," and he'd go and put the kettle on. Mum had done all this. Mum had died two years ago in March and since then the emails had piled up, from the GP, from the council, from my brother in Calgary who'd stopped calling because Dad never picked up, and had started emailing instead, into a void. This time I made a rule. "I'm not going to touch it. I'm going to sit here and you're going to do it." "That's not teaching, that's watching." "It's the only thing I haven't tried." He got to the browser. He got to the email. He stared at the inbox, which had 214 unread, and I saw him do the thing where his shoulders go up. "Just the top one," I said. The top one was from my brother. Subject line: "Dad, are you getting these?" He clicked it. Slowly, with one finger, like the trackpad might bite. It opened. He read it. It was short, a paragraph about the grandkids and the weather in Calgary and "Dad, please, even one line, just so I know." I watched him read it twice. "How do I write back." I pointed at the card. Step five. He found the reply button. A box opened. He put his hands on the keys the way he used to on the piano at Christmas, wrists up, and then he typed, with two fingers, over about four minutes:

"Hello Michael. Yes I am getting them. Your sister is here making me do this. The weather here is also bad. Give the boys my love. Dad." "Send," I said. "Which one's send." "The blue one." He pressed it. It went. He looked at the screen for a second and then at me, and I could see him deciding whether that had been a big deal or not. "Right," he said. "Kettle." He went to the kitchen. I sat there with the laptop. And I watched, while he was gone, as the screen refreshed and a new email came in, from Calgary, subject line "DAD!!!!", and the body was just "Finally. Love you. Do it again tomorrow." He came back with two mugs. I turned the laptop towards him. He read it. He didn't say anything. He put my mug down and picked up the index card and read step one again, quite carefully, as if memorising it. The next morning I came down and he was at the table with the laptop open and 213 unread, and he was on the phone to my brother saying, "No, I'm doing it, I'm doing it now, don't send another one till I've done this one." I haven't taken the index card down. He hasn't either.