You never know the value of what you have until you no longer have it.
I think everyone can relate to this phrase on some level. For some people it’s a lost person. For others, a lost job. A comfortable home. Financial security. Family. Education. Freedom. Health…you name it.
For me it’s colours.
How can you lose colours?
Blindness.
I remember the initial shock when I woke up in the hospital. It’s a strange thing to wake up, to be conscious, to open your eyes and not be able to see anything. I blinked several times. I rubbed my eyes. Maybe I was in a very dark room? But there were people talking…my parents, some unfamiliar voice…
“Kat? How are you feeling?”
“Mom? Where am I? Can someone turn on the light?”
It’s terrifying when a simple question like that is answered in silence.
“Mom. I can’t see anything, will someone turn a light on?”
Wow, my head is throbbing…
“Kat, the lights are on,” said Dad’s voice quietly.
“Then why can’t I see anything?” More silence. And the panicked thoughts, What’s going on?! Why can’t I seen anything..?
I didn’t remember much of the accident. Just falling from the top of a ladder, and then blackness. And even though the rest of my mind and body awoke from the blackness, my eyes never did.
I miss colours. I miss walking in my Grandma’s garden and seeing all the flowers. Bright red, soft blushing pink, vibrant shades of green, deep alluring blue….all in my mind’s eye still, but out of my visual reach. I can feel their soft petals and smell their fragrances. But my ability to imagine their graceful beauty is limited by the pictures filed away in my mind.
I remember sitting down at the piano for the first time after I got home. I felt the keys, the hand positions. I found middle C, and played a little improvised ditty. It’s amazing what fingers can remember when eyes can no longer guide them. I felt the curvature of the piano’s woodwork, the back where my books would sit open when I was practicing…there, one of my books. Probably Debussy’s Children’s Corner, because that’s the last one I had been playing from. Doctor Gradus. I put my hands in the opening position and began to play. Seven or eight measures in, and then — memory lapse. What comes next? I thought hard, I replayed the previous measures, but could not remember what to play next. I instinctively reached for my book and turned to the second page of the piece….is this where those measures were..?
But I couldn’t see them.
I cried the day I realized that I couldn’t read music anymore. I would never behold with my eyes the beautiful notated music; the rests and dynamic markings, the flawlessly printed notes whispering to the trained musician’s eye of all the magical musical potential they held.
I miss seeing faces. I can recall to mind what my Mama’s face looks like, her smile, her dark hair with hints of red. When she laughs I try to recover the mental image that goes with that beautiful joyous sound. I want to see the tears of joy rolling down her cheeks as she laughs.
I miss seeing the sparkle in Dad’s eyes when he tells a joke. I hear the joke, I catch the wit, but I can’t see that knowing glance he would often cast in my direction, waiting for a response to his humour. I miss his smile, his black goatee speckled with white.
Picture memories are all I have of people, places and events. They are astonishingly vivid in my mind. But they don’t compare with the sensory experience of seeing something as it unfolds.
So with floods of emotion and all the willful creativity of my imagination, I listen to the laughter, the music, the thunder and lightning and tap-dancing rain on the windows. I smell the fresh air after the rain storm, the spices Mom adds to the soup she makes, the coffee Dad makes after dinner, the flowers in my Grandma’s garden. I touch the textured fabrics of the pillows on the couch, the quilt on my bed. I touch Dad’s face when he laughs to remember the contour of his smile and feel the smile lines by his eyes.
This is how I see. This is how I behold beauty. In the hidden eye of my mind.
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songs of stippled stardust 