Op-Ed Columns

My father's blind.

Just typing that sounds peculiar, perhaps inaccurate.

Blind? Really blind?

Fathers are strong, durable, sturdy enough for the whole family, the consistent bedrock on which those around them can depend.

Stoic, quiet, closer to 90 than he'd like to admit, my father fits that description. Or at least that's how I've always seen him.

But a few years ago, amid the trauma of burying his spouse and reinventing his life, his eyesight began to flicker like bad reception from an old black-and-white TV. Glaucoma, the doctors said.

There was no pain, no precursor. Just the reality that every time he opened his eyes, he saw less than he did the day before.

So the routine began. Eye drops in the morning, during the day, in the evenings, before bed. Eyedrops, eyedrops, eyedrops. He became a slave to liquid in small, white containers. Anything to reduce the pressure — that magical number — inside his eyes. He tried new glasses, the lenses stronger than those before. His 24-hour-a-day fight to retain what he was losing became the motivation his later years so sorely needed.

Doctors aren't gods. They can't stave off the inevitable.

He lost the fight.

Blindness came.

With it, my father's life changed — more so than at any time during his eight-plus decades on this Earth. He was a teen during the Depression, the oldest son in a family that desperately needed leadership, a member of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation, a World War II veteran with Bronze Stars to his name, a father of five. But nothing, he would tell me, presented the challenge that did blindness.

He had to move from his family home in the South to a daughter's home in the West, far away from everything and most everyone he'd known. His eyesight failing, he could see only enough to inch his way around the house like a toddler learning to walk. No longer able to drive or live by himself for fear of falling — or worse — he gave in to the reality of his newfound but unwanted world. A series of broken bones and painful surgeries only made matters worse.

When the phone rang, our conversations across time zones almost always began the same way.

"My eyesight's just getting dimmer and dimmer," he would say.

Over and over again.

"I know," I'd tell him.

Over and over again.

The update complete but unchanged, we'd move on to other things.

Soon, he couldn't distinguish between colors. Sight became a measurement of light, not images. One eye completely dark, he could still see flashes of light out of the other. That alone allowed him to tell if the TV was on or if someone walked in front of him. Read? Impossible. Watch his favorite show? No chance. See the smile on someone's face?

Frustration, depression, set in.

But he soldiered on, as he had before. The glasses were now useless, mere ornaments resting atop his nose. The eyedrop routine became his final attempt to retain what he still had, a proud man's fight to control a portion of his life that he could not. He had little eyesight — none, really — but he had no plans to see that sputter away uncontested.

He now sits in the dark, his eyesight a mere memory. He listens to the TV. He realizes he's totally — completely — dependent on the help of others. The thought of living by himself, of spending extending periods of time alone, doing what he wants, is a desire of the past.

Glaucoma altered his entire world.

That this story is my father's reality makes it difficult for me to separate emotion from cruel facts. I'm thankful he has a place to live, that he's taken care of, that otherwise he's fairly healthy. Be pleased with what you have.

I'm also aware that people who've been blind since birth or childhood may have a completely different outlook on life than does my father. Blindness is not a death sentence, as I've tried to get him to understand. My appreciation for people who've persevered through the challenges that blindness creates is now off the charts.

Beforehand, I could not imagine what it was like to open your eyes and see nothing.

I still don't know first-hand. But I have a pretty good idea.

In that way, blindness is allowing my father to teach me a lesson, to show me the realities of life, to prepare me for a possible future.

Some things never change.