I usually identify as blind because it is easier than trying to explain what I can and can’t see, but the label isn’t entirely accurate. Technically, I do have a little vision, though not enough to recognize faces or read print of any size. LCA is slowly depleting the tiny amount of vision I was blessed with at birth, and I’m finally beginning to care.
As a child, one of my favourite activities was visiting the greenhouse on a warm June day, basking in the profusion of mellow blues, insistent reds and cheery yellows all around me. Many colours were beyond my visual scope even then, but as a child the brightest colours were still easy to see, and I relished them. I appreciated them most where I found them in nature: I discovered them in flowers, in crushed autumn leaves, and even in fruit bowls. I became confused when trying to see the soft green of an apple, but had no difficulty appreciating garish carrots and sunny lemons. While I didn’t exactly understand beauty, I did understand the vibrancy and immediacy of colour, and I remained fascinated for many years.
As my vision is slowly eaten away, however, my cones (colour-sensitive cells of the eye) are deteriorating. My peripheral vision is all I ever really had to begin with, and as that disappears, my ability to distinguish colours is fading with it. Where once I could easily separate bright yellow tank tops from pale pink ones from white ones, I now struggle. If I tilt my head just so, and squint my eyes just so, and say the magic incantation just so, I can sometimes tell. Other times, however, no amount of adjustments of lighting or head position will quite do the trick, and I’m left just a little unsure. My world is turning, ever so gradually, into one of shades. I no longer notice bright colours unless they’re called to my attention. I could be gazing straight at a bright red apple, but it looks black until I concentrate. Only then does the red hue show itself. Mostly, I’m okay with that. … Mostly.
Occasionally, I allow a little sadness to steal over me. It’s not just colour I’m losing, either. Just this evening, I was looking down at my parents’ black dog. He was sprawled on the carpet, enjoying a luxurious nap, and I realized I could no longer see the entire length of his body without moving my head. My field of vision is now so narrow that I cannot even see an entire hand’s breadth without difficulty. It’s a small thing really—being able to see the length of a dog’s body is not exactly a life-saving perk. Even so, after so many years of knowing things would change but not really dealing with that knowledge, I’m suddenly forced to face it head on.
On the bright side, the loss is proceeding at a snail’s pace. It takes several years for me to detect a significant decline, so I feel quite peaceful about the whole process. My brain is learning to accept the loss little by little, and I’m learning right along with it. Since my vision was never of much practical use anyway, I’m not nearly as distressed as one might expect me to be. Certainly I’m not fantasizing about a cure or composing laments every other day.
But sometimes…I miss the flowers. I miss the ability to sort laundry without any effort at all. I miss the gentle gold of the sunrise and the fiery orange of the sunset over the trees. I don’t know if I’d call these things beautiful, exactly—it’s not beauty I was seeing—but I would call them, well, intriguing. Bit by bit, my world is becoming less vibrant.
Sure, I still have sound, and scent, and touch, and taste, and all the rest of it. No, I’m not awash in grief over the whole thing. I’ve always known it would turn out this way, and I’m thankful that I was ever able to see those flowers and those apples and those sunsets—or my version of “seeing” them, I suppose. It’s important to remember that I really had very little beyond colour to appreciate visually. Even at birth, I had but a tiny fraction of what sighted people have. But, yes, I will miss the colours.
It’s lonely, sometimes. I have a lot of totally blind friends, and they simply can’t empathize. Paradoxically, my sighted friends are even less able to do so, because they find the idea so horrifying. How could I possibly feel mild nostalgia rather than all-consuming heartbreak? I feel as though I’m not quite a real member of the blind-person club, all because I know what red looks like. I do belong, functionally speaking: I can’t read street signs or take photographs or even recognize my mother’s face. Despite the fact that my life ticks most of the “blind” boxes, I feel just a little isolated, as I sit on my living room couch and look down sadly at that dog.
It will be all right, of course. In general, I shall carry on as cheerfully as always. In general, I will not feel the need for sight or the longing for a cure. In general, I’ll continue to be a typical blind person. Every now and again, though, I’ll take a moment to bid a quick farewell to the colourful world.
Where's Your Dog? 