I had been losing my eyesight a little at a time for the past several years. It didn’t start as anything dramatic. If anything, it was all very gradual.
I noticed it at first with my peripheral sight. The range of my peripherals shrunk in imperceptible bits until it was gone. Driving became adventurous and quickly became impossible. I had to surrender my keys before I could accidentally side-swipe another car. Or motorcycle.
Last time was a motorcycle.
I honestly did not see the motorcycle there. That knowledge did not bring any comfort to that teen’s grieving family.
Things became worse after that. My persistent gray floaters stopped floating. They stuck together. They turned black.
Impenetrable black.
That blackness multiplied until my world of light was nothing but a semi-circle.
I went to the eye doctor. He gave me a diagnosis. I still don’t know what it was. I just remembered the word Irreversible and Blindness. He may have said something about catching it sooner and prolonging the inevitable. But there was no catching it now. No prolonging what would happen.
It was inevitable.
It was now.
I was going blind.
I slept with the light on so I could hold onto the light for as long as I could. Actually falling asleep was a daunting task. I didn’t want to close my eyes. I was terrified about what I would wake up to. So terrified of how much more sight I would lose in four hours, six hours, eight hours, twelve hours.
I knew the time would come when I would wake to impenetrable, unbreakable, unlightable blackness.
I would be completely blind.
I would be in the dark until the day I died.
My family sent me to therapy to deal with the impending doom. My therapist sent me to classes where I would learn skills to handle living in the dark.
I learned many things, but deep down I was terrified.
Then, as my world of vision slowly shrank into a smaller and smaller semi-circle, I made a decision. I wanted to see the mountains.
Before I went completely blind, I wanted to see the mountains.
I needed to see them.
So, my family took me to them.
The whole drive there was like going through an endless tunnel where the entrance was forever just in reach. But I couldn’t break through. I couldn’t get through that entrance. It stayed out of reach. Everything outside of that entrance was blurry but oh so full of light.
The sky was cloudy but light. Gray, gray light.
It was a long journey.
Such a long journey.
It rained.
Then, the rain went away. Some of the grayness dissipated. The sun broke through the clouds.
And oh.
Oh.
The mountains.
The mountains were ahead of us, outside of my semicircle of dark, inside the brilliance of light. The mountains seemed to glow.
They were beautiful.
They were glorious.
I would always remember them.
Even when the dark came…I wouldn’t forget.
https://thedailyspur.wordpress.com/2022/05/02/love-driving-through-tunnels/
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