using email for the "bad" news?

Late last night, I received an email from a close relative informing me that the father one of an old friend of our family had died. My relative explained that the reason why she sent the information to me in an email, instead of a phonecall, was that she couldn't help but cry when she tried to call people to share the bad tidings.

On one hand, I can understand this logic, but I also find that email just doesn't do our personal relationships much justice. We can't hear someone's tone or intent as well, and even if they were crying on the other line, that is what family and friends are for. I was a little confused as to why my relative would be crying over someone whom they didn't know very well, and then realized that the deceased reminded her of her own father, who had died of lung cancer last year. His death had come sudden, leaving most of my family very little time to prepare. It seemed like he was fine one day, with only a bare trace of a chronic cough, and the next day he was using a portable oxygen concentrator, and a week later he was in hospice care.

So how do I feel about this impersonal email? On one hand, I'm glad that my relative didn't call me in the middle of the night. On the other hand, seeing as this was the father of a friend of the family, she could have waited until the next day to tell me, and I could have consoled her over the phone.

It makes me wonder if people felt the same way about telephones as we do about email. When the telephone was first deployed, were people scoffing at it because it was so less personal than personally visiting someone?