In the Beginning

In the Beginning

Everyone recognized Dr. Nelson. A political science professor at Southern Illinois University, the man was a campus fixture, kind and gentlemanly, impeccably dressed. We marveled at the dignity and ease with which he and his guide dog navigated the hilly, wooded campus. He was exotic, intriguing, Other. He was conspicuous.

This was in the late 1970s. Fast-forward to Dr. Nelson’s Ball State counterpart and my husband of 29 years, Dr. Tom Weidner. When we married at the ripe old age of 21, we both knew he had a slowly progressive eye disease, but the potential that he could become blind, the ramifications of living day-to-day with a disability, these were merely Star Trek holograms, no more real than old age or parenthood. By 1993, Tom was a full professor and well-established scholar, father of three lively children. And he was blind—I found myself married to the man everyone recognized, the guy with the dog. I took refuge in memories of Dr. Nelson’s classy attitude and demeanor. I wrote him a letter, and he responded with a stark honesty that gives me pause still: “Blindness is a grievous disability.”

Wait a minute! Excuse me, sir, but that’s the wrong answer. You’re supposed to tell me how utterly normal and ordinary you are, how your life is just like everyone else’s, how the dog gets you everywhere you want to go. You’re supposed to make me feel better, gild the disability, paste on a smiley face.

Grievous? As in loss? The relentless pain of the not-there? Well, yes.

Blindness is relentless. Beth Finke, a Chicago-based commentator for National Public Radio, states, “People think… that everything’s okay now, that I’ve ‘overcome’ my blindness. But it’s just not true. The only people who conquer disabilities are those who are cured. The rest of us…live with our disabilities, not despite them.”

It sounds so deceptively simple, so positive, so politically correct: “living with disabilities.” To quote Finke again, “On good days, I think of this as a blessing: Not everyone gets a chance to live life from such completely different perspectives. On bad days, I grieve.”[1] That word again, with its connotations of burden and heaviness and pain.

Despite the magic of computers and other adaptive technologies; despite beautiful, polite, dependable guide dogs; despite the rebellious, resilient human spirit; despite intellectual or marital status; despite elaborate coping mechanisms and soul-deep joie de vivre, people’s lives are diminished by blindness.

I’m not saying that blind people don’t lead full, productive, joyful lives. Of course they do—any cursory internet search turns up all sorts of successful blind folks (Beth Finke, for example, or Tom Weidner. Homer, John Milton, Ray Charles). What I am saying is that we tend to gloss over, ignore, paint in pretty colors the difficulties that just plain do attend blindness.

[next time: watch "overcoming blindness" from the sidelines]

[1] Used by permission. Quoted from Beth Finke’s radio essay “Christopher Reeve’s Legacy for the Disabled,” available at http://www.bethfinke.com/media.html. Ms. Finke’s gracious, astute comments concerning blindness, guide dogs, fashion, and whatever else is on her mind can be found there as well.