THE LIGHT HAD FAILED a long time ago. The research, the injections, even the gridlines you had to look at to check if your macular degeneration was getting worse – all these had come too late for Vera. She was blind.
Most days, Vera was reasonably pleased with how she was coping. Her long-dead mother, whose astringent voice she could still hear clearly, would have – mostly – been proud of her. She had learned to use a white cane, although combining it with a walker was proving a challenge. She had learned to operate – by touch, of course – the Talking Books that the CNIB sent her. Podcasts were great, but she couldn’t do the actual downloading herself. When Hilda or James came to see her – or better still, one of their children – she would get them to load up her Kindle, although what she ended up playing back was still a bit of a potluck. Sometimes she gave up and listened to the same podcast twice. Or three times.
Even when the Kindle irritated her most, though, Vera made a point of never complaining. That way lay rolled eyes – which she was sure a person could hear as well as see – and whispered conversations that stopped as soon as one entered the room. She would not be That Elderly Parent.
In the days of her declining sight, she had lived with James and then with Hilda. Helpers had come in to teach her the various skills
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Mary Sylvia Winter is a writer of novels, short stories, poetry and children’s fiction who combines writing with teaching English, to the mutual benefit of both. She has completed three novels and is working on a fourth, as well as recently completing the short story collection Covid Tales, from which ‘The Eyes of the Blind’ is taken. Mary divides her time between Canada and England, and can both make scones and paddle a canoe.