Sight

It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that Big Red restored my vision; she’s been helping me to see for a long time.

On what would have been her 105th birthday my Uncle Steve, the executor of her estate, made a cash distribution to her heirs. We were all grateful and surprised by the unexpected gift. On a family e-mail several of my cousins, aunts and uncles commented on what they were going to do with the boon. There was talk of reupholstering dining room chairs and buying new shoes. I put my check in the bank. I felt that my always frugal grandmother would have approved.

Right about this time I found out I needed cataract surgery. Health insurance covers the procedure, but not the new corrective lenses that would give me twenty-twenty vision, something I have not had since I was nine years old. What to do? I didn’t have several thousand dollars just sitting around the house, but I did have my benefaction from Big Red. Thinking about using her money to restore my vision brought back a memory and made me smile.

When I first went to live with her in my junior year of college I was wearing the old-fashioned hard contact lenses. Wearing them was like putting a plastic tiddlywink in one’s eye. Soft contacts had recently come on the market, but were cost prohibitive for me trying to finish school on a budget. After yet another day spent in a dark room with a cold wash cloth over my eyes suffering from a scratched cornea courtesy of the hard lenses Big Red announced she was buying me a pair of soft lenses.

“I promised the Lord that if I won at Bingo I’d give the money to charity and I think your eyes are a good charity,” she said after winning $1,000 the night before at the church hall.

I took her up on her offer. Little did I know that was just the beginning of gaining sight from my beloved grandmother. Over the next thirty-plus years she taught me how to look at the world. I learned to see my life, my home, my family, my friends, my career as she would have seen them. I’ve asked myself on many an occasion, how would Big Red do this, handle this, react to this. I became a better person by examining things through her eyes.

She is gone, but she is still giving me sight – both literally and figuratively. I now have twenty-twenty vision afforded because of her monetary legacy and I have the gift of her love and her example for how to live my life. Sight is a wonderful thing.