It’s funny how little we tend think about our eyes …. or the gift of sight.
Then you hear the words “Cataract Surgery.”
After that, you can scarcely think of anything else.
Yesterday was not the first day I had heard the words “you have cataracts.” The last time I got glasses, which was earlier this year, the optician at Lens Crafters told me that she was seeing the beginning of cataracts in both eyes, but neither of them were so serious that they had to be dealt with immediately. On the other hand, they were serious enough that they found it impossible to bring my vision to 20/20, which should have been a clue for me that this was something that would require action sooner rather than later.
I think it was sometime this fall that I started to realize that my vision was growing noticeably worse. It was most apparent to me when I was laying in bed and trying to read the channel guide on the TV across the room. What had been merely challenging was now utterly impossible. And when Kathy pointed out that my most recent eyeglasses had been purchased just this past March, I realized how drastic and rapid the decline had been. Scary scary scary.
Fortunately, the news from Dr. Warren yesterday was actually the best news he could have possibly given me. This was not glaucoma ….. nor macular degeneration. It was cataracts, an entirely treatable condition…. and something that plenty of people deal with. And although I’m a tad young to have cataracts (at this point in life, it’s nice for a change to be told I’m a bit young for something) this is certainly not any sort of shocking surprise. The next step is for me to speak with the surgeon and get things scheduled for a time that will work for me- although I am certainly aware that nothing in my crazy life is more important to me than getting myself back to the lovely world of 20/20 vision.
Although I started this post by saying how little we tend to appreciate the gift of sight, I actually think I have thought about it a fair amount over the years, thanks to some people I have encountered in my life …. and I was reminded of one of them this summer when I was part of the Weston Noble Alumni Choir. One of the Luther alums who was part of this year’s choir was a guy I remember from when we lived in Decorah back in the late 1960/early 1970s …. and who I had not seen since then. Dave Walle was his name, and my mom got to know him when she was secretary for the music department. Dave was such an interesting and friendly young man and she took an instant liking to him – and when she found out that he was a piano tuner, she hired him to tune our piano at home. I can still vividly remember watching him with absolute wonder that he was able to perform such delicate and intricate work without being able to see anything – and after he was done, I remember sitting at our kitchen table and watching him eat a snack …. asking myself ‘what would it be like to live without sight?” It was so good to see Dave this summer – for the first time in 42 years! And I was so glad to see that he was pretty much the same exuberant, joyous guy that I remembered.
(This is a photo of Dave performing at our Wednesday night follies. He brought down the house.)
Speaking of Luther, when a friend of mine named Kim Oltrogge came back for this year’s Alumni Choir, I found myself reminiscing with her about a night back in college when Marshall and I went down to the Viking Theater to catch a movie – and Kim was sitting in the row behind us with a good friend of hers named Tom …. who was blind. I so vividly remembering Kim sitting there and quietly describing the onscreen action to Tom. It was such a tender thing for her to do for this good friend of hers, and I remember thinking how fortunate Tom was to have such a friend …. and how fortunate Kim was, as well, to have an inspiring person like Tom in her life, who had such a lovely spirit.
From earlier in my childhood, I also remember meeting a woman who was the sister of one of my mom’s best friends when we lived in Colton, South Dakota. A doctor’s terrible error caused Betty to go blind when she was a very young girl, but she lived life joyously and gratefully ….. and became a very fine semi-professional singer. One of Betty’s methods of contending with blindness was to find the humor in it, and she and her sister Joyce would roar with laughter recounting various mishaps- like the time when Betty got dressed (on her own) for a concert engagement and grabbed what she thought was a can of hairspray, only to discover that she had accidentally sprayed her hair with Christmas Tree Snow! Even in that moment, right before concert time, Betty thought it was hilarious- and that story still makes me smile all these years later. And from time to time, it’s occurred to me that if something should ever happen to my sight, I would hope that I would carry on the way Betty or Tom or Dave did.
Of course, it might seem a bit peculiar that a simple case of cataracts is prompting these stories about Blindness. (“Get a grip, Greg!” you might be saying right about now.) But the fact is that I am seeing things differently right now- even though my actual eyesight is completely unchanged. But as I sit here in my office, looking at all of the brilliantly colored stuff all around me, I cannot help but feel profoundly grateful for my two eyes and the fact that they work as well as they do ….. and that within the next month or two, they will begin working better than they have in quite some time. It will be nice to look at the trees and see leaves again ….. to look up in a night sky and see all of the stars that should be seen ….. to be able to read a bit more easily the crazy Carthage Choir piano accompaniments I have to play. It will see so good to see more clearly.
Something I will never take for granted again.