Learning from Blindness

Abstract

Only when my friend kevin said, in an aside to his wife i was not meant to hear, that i was still grieving for my loss of sight did i realize that I was and had been for the past seven years. When a friend or family member dies, it is an obvious time to grieve; when someone you love dies, you have to get on as best you can without them. But when you are confronted with a disability, it is as if a part of you has died, and the rest of you has to get on as best it can. Learning how to come to terms with the change in your day-to-day life disguises the need for grief. So, seven years on, let me give you an inkling of what happens when one of your senses dies. The metaphor of death (or perhaps it's not a metaphor) is convenient since it leads to a framework for my explanation. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in On Death and Dying, explored the ways we come to terms with death through five emotional stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.