Blindness

#482


As with everything on my blog, I dictate because I am totally blind, a 100% disabled, service connected, field grade medical officer, Korean War veteran. I am not dictating this for empathy or sympathy. I refuse to get the “victim mentality”. With all the blessings of life, perhaps blindness is my greatest blessing because if I were not blind I would have probably killed myself in an automobile collision long ago. Those who know me best, know my egocentric methods of doing everything in a rush. I have traveled life in the fast lane, how else could have I accomplished so much? But, when sighted, even with a small amount of vision in one eye, the sun visor on my car was lined with prescription glasses cases and I was constantly changing glasses, trying to see how to drive, always in a hurry, buying and selling real estate, taking care of patients, and speeding from place to place on speaking engagements. Some days I would speak in three places...miles apart. One time, passing all these slow people, I finally got right behind the hearse! Those who knew me knew that I was driving...a real menace on the highway because of my lack of sight, dictating into a recorder, making notes with one hand, and God only knows what I could have done with a cell phone.

So, the little sight left from the military finally went and now I have plenty of time for worship as well as thinking and I still accomplish much in absolute darkness...still in business, still investing, still buying and selling, still writing.

One cannot imagine the challenge of blindness until you are there. I truly believe some people think it is an interlude in your day when they see me out somewhere...being led around...using a white cane but it is continuous. You shave as a blind man, you dress as a blind man, you prepare your food as a blind man, you do your laundry as a blind man. You have many radios set on certain stations because you cannot see how to change the dial. You learn to move your fingers on the telephone, the cook stove, the microwave, the alarm system. Life is a challenge from the time you get up until you go to bed, and then you know the hazards of fire or emergency...particularly when you live alone.

Don't think for one minute that anyone understands or that anyone cares...least of all your family. I could count on the fingers of one hand the relatives who have been in my house during the past 50 years. I could almost count on the fingers of two hands, the friends or neighbors who have been in my house during the past 50 years. Out of their sight, out of their mind. I just wish I knew there were a few people in the world who prayed for me each day, who had that much concern but, I know that concern is a lost word in most vocabularies. It is a “me” generation. I have said on talk radio, that if anyone wants to make a quick 1000 dollars, I will give 1000 dollars to anyone who can prove that one veterans group, one civic club, one church, one social group (Red Cross, Social Services, Commission for the Blind, Blind Veterans Association) has ever done one thing for this veteran, blind citizen. I am expected to pay as much tax as anyone else. The only thing government has ever given me is the license plate for my car. In North Carolina, the license plate for a handicapped, decorated veteran is free. But, the one who was so concerned about blind people in his word (Seven times God referred to blind people in his book) has been very concerned about me. Like blind Bartimaeus, at Jericho, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” (Luke 18:38) God has had mercy on me. Thank God I have not sought justice...only mercy.

I get very exasperated with sighted people who see so little and have no appreciation for their sight. Next to life itself, your greatest physical gift is eyesight. The world does not consider you disabled unless you are in a wheel chair. Even at the veterans hospital, the blind veterans get very little attention...are expected to feel their way around, must hire someone to get them there and yet, having given your most precious sense, treated like trash. It is too late for me, but I hope the very inept Veterans Administration will treat the young warriors who are blind, better.

I never received one minute of rehabilitation training. It took 30 years for me to get the utility housing allowance for disabled veterans when I had a security system put in the house since the greatest horror of a blind person is a break in or fire and as you age, falling. For 30 years, I put cement blocks behind exits. The VA obviously did not care that I would be burned in my own house...after being commissioned straight out of school, having starved through eight years of education to be able to give specialized service in an Army hospital, to then be burdened with writing stacks of letters trying to get minimum help. Delay, deny, and wait for you to die is the mantra of VA care for veterans. I have made it very clear to the trust officer who will handle my remains, I do not want one dime of government money spent on my burial, not even a flag. The worst thing that can happen to a blind person, other than dishonest employees (two young men are in prison now for writing checks on my bank account) is having people whisper around you. In traveling the world, I never allowed people to talk to me in English around people who did not understand English. Once, two friends were speaking their language which I did not understand and I said to them, “your rudeness is only exceeded by your rudeness, you know I cannot understand what you are saying, are you talking about me?” I go to a meeting, to a church, into a restaurant, and everything gets quiet. One restaurant owner told me that he did not want a handicapped customer like me in his restaurant because it made his normal customers uncomfortable.

Blind people pay taxes like everyone else but use few things for which their taxes are spent...parks, concert halls, athletic stadiums, jails, very few disabled people in prison. Most of us make our own way. I have been greatly blessed to have traveled most of the world, using my other senses, hearing the sounds of Hong Kong, smelling Tangier, and feeling the cold of Siberia. I would like to have seen my parents before they were put into the ground. I would like very much to see my two grandsons. (Both grown, one a lawyer, one an engineer) My next sight will be in heaven and I so look forward to that.

Life is what you make of it, normal or disabled. I have told many that happiness is being able to work, going to bed at night and looking forward to working the next day. The test of the man is not what he does when he is healthy, wealthy and wise, but what he does when unhealthy...disabled.