Unfixable

The other day, my sister, Paula and her kids, took me to the airport. As we were riding, my nephew, Joseph, leaned up from his seat to where I was sitting in the front-passenger-seat. Out of the blue, he asked me, “Can doctors fix blind people?”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew what my nephew was really thinking. He wanted to know if there was any help for his blind auntie. At that very moment, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that so far the doctors haven’t been able to “fix” blind people that have my specific eye condition.

I quickly started to figure that no matter what, Joseph deserved to know the truth about me and my unfixable, completely damaged optic nerves. I took a deep breath and broke the bad news to him. “As of right now, there’s nothing the doctors can do to help Auntie.”

“That’s a shame.” He quickly replied. He went on to say that doctors needed to find some kind of way to fix blind people. He continued by telling me, his blind aunt, that being blind was such a sad thing to be in this world.

I silently wondered what I had done or not done to make my nine-year-old nephew think that being blind was such a sad thing to be. Although being blind is pretty annoying, I try to live my life in a way that the kids don’t see me as a helpless, hopeless, sad, little lamb.

But does Joseph really see me that way? Or is he now old enough to realize that not having any sight really does significantly impact most of what I do, in addition to what I desire to do. Maybe Joseph has taken notice how much my blindness has inconvenienced me when it’s time to go somewhere. Perhaps Joseph has just now started to discover how different I am from all of the other women in his life. Could it be that Joseph is now processing what I already know, but didn’t want him to know; that being blind honestly sucks.

Joseph leaned up closer to my face. I could feel his soft cheek on my ear. He touched my shoulder with his little man hand and firmly, yet compassionately said to me, “Everything is going to be alright.”

I nearly cried at that moment. I was comforted by my Joseph’s blossoming compassion for his auntie. A drape of love had just been placed around my shoulders by this young child. Instead of allowing tears to roll from my unfixable eyes, I turned and kissed his handsome face and reassured him that everything would indeed be alright.

**At this point, I don’t have a lot of wealth to leave to the kids when I depart this current life. So, I write these narratives to offer them a treasure of love and memories to cherish through their lives. They are truly my motivation for writing.**