|
Senior News May, 2005 Vol. 24. No. 5
Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.
|
|
|
Humboldt Senior Resource Center Back issues Table of Contents
Plus in this issue catch more news, opinions, features, book reviews, and event calendars.
Pick up a copy today! Better yet, subscribe and never miss an issue! Brought to you by 
|
Remembering Spirit Spirit visits people's lives as they wrestle with vision changes by Ali O. Lee Spirit arrives daily, seemingly as common as toast. It lives in our laps - not mere crumbs, but local evidence of our ability to adapt and move from where we find ourselves. As part of a team providing vision loss services on the North Coast, I am but one who encounters people adjusting to their changing bodies with pockets full of surprises, fears, strategies and stories of what came before their vision changed. Some people used to drive, some used to write their own checks and some used to employ others. While some people with low vision or total blindness do keep their own books and keep their businesses running with training and adaptive equipment, others newer to living with visual impairment find themselves comparing their lives now with the lives that came before people's faces blurred, narrowed or disappeared completely. As they adjust and journey uniquely to the changes in their bodies, I witness the spirit breathe deepest when we shift to talking about the story unfolding - their stories about adjusting to having uncorrectable vision but changeable ways of accessing print information, about reading who is or is not in a room, about negotiating intersections safely with orientation and mobility instruction also known as white cane training. Spirit arrives as a man risks taking public transportation for the first time in his life. He is 69. He is legally blind. He is finding his way to the mall for a movie or to meet a friend for lunch. Spirit arrives slowly sometimes. For more than 20 years a woman has vision loss from diabetic retinopathy, one of the more common eye diseases, yet she is seeking training to learn to use a stove marked with locator dots, double spatulas that act as tongs and a talking timer. She accesses her mother's recipes with a video magnifier that enlarges the print beyond what a hand-held magnifier can often do. She receives training from a provider who teaches her that the side of the milk carton with the embossed crease is the side that will easily open-not the other side where the glue will sometimes cause the carton to tear and the milk to pour to the left or right of center. Sometimes spirit arises heroically as a couple sails the world together to be the first to do so although legally blind. Sometimes spirit arrives on the daily wings of a mother who teams up with a provider. At home the parent reinforces the Braille instruction at school. This child tackles learning Braille in addition to learning how to print in school. She will know both forms of communication given her willingness to pursue the myriad combinations of the six dots that comprise the basic Braille cell. Yet she goes beyond the basics. She is willing to go beyond what others may say she cannot do. More importantly, she is willing to go beyond what others may believe that she can and cannot do. Daily she defines her own limits and defines what independence means to her and her alone. She carves that name spirit in the trunk of possibility and normalizes the changes that her body has wrought. At the LightHouse of the North Coast, this transition is our daily bread. Spirit is not only in the fare of the exceptional few who scale peaks and break records, but also in the tangible day-to-day tasks and destinations, no matter what the diagnosis. It is in each of our pockets no matter how soft the cotton has become, no matter how worn the decoration. Ali O. Lee is Vision Loss Services Coordinator for the LightHouse of the North Coast, www.lighthouse-sf.org. Her e-mail is alee@lighthouse-sf.org. |
Senior News