Homage

I have long been meaning to write a tribute of sorts to a dear friend of mine who would be totally appalled by such an idea. She is far too modest and grounded to accept such praise as "hero" or "role-model", so I will share these terms with you and hope that she doesn't get too angry with me.

I met her almost seven years ago as I took charge of my first piano class. My supervisor had taken me aside prior to the semester to ask me if I would be okay teaching a blind student. Her demeanor when asking the question sobered me and stilled my immediate response of "why would I mind?". She told me that it was going to be challenging for the entire music staff to have a new music student with such needs and special requirements and that she didn't want to overburden me. We could move the student to a different class with a more experienced teacher perhaps. Thank God for my stubbornness kicking in and allowing me to say that there would be no such need. How much my life would have suffered without this person I was so cautiously introduced to. I can, without reservation, say that she was also the best piano student I ever had. I often told her that I wished that all my students would forget they could see for the hour in my class and feel the keys like she did. What a gift. And here's the truly remarkable thing about her: she would absolutely agree with me that it is a gift. She has used every obstacle (and there have been heartbreakingly many) to climb to new heights of self actualization and was already one of the most wise and independent souls I had ever met when I came to know her in her freshman year.

While at the state school where I met her, she was the victim of countless acts of ignorance and malice due only to misconceptions. No one could look at her performance with a rational eye and find anything lacking, but she was constantly treated as a liability. I never once saw her behave as if she had a handicap, yet her own successful efforts were drowned in a sea of conflicting assumptions as to her capabilities. Her teachers refused to help her obtain braille music, yet insisted that she not learn from recordings. Her seeing eye dog (my dog soul mate, Abby) was once taken off the stage in the middle of her performance, with her professor whispering in her ear, "If you stop singing, I will fail you." And she was also once accused of ruining a pianist's Master's recital because Abby did not like Hindemith and kept jiggling in her collar. A note on that: as a graduate of the same program with the same degree as the pianist in question, and as a good friend of said pianist, I would say the fault lies entirely in the performer that cannot maintain her concentration and poise. Perhaps I'm biased, but ask any performer and they will tell you the same. Finally, my friend began losing her love of music and changed her major; immediately being met with a professionalism and respect of the success that she so constantly demonstrated. Not all Southern professors are ignorant, and thankfully she found some that appreciated an excellent student when they met one. The girl even pulled off a major in literature if that tells you anything about her determination and abilities.

As deeply as I respect her for how she put so much ignorance to shame in her education, it is her response to grief that constantly moves me. Her grace breaks my heart as she faces tragedies that most of us will never even conceive of. After knowing me for some time, she told me of the first great grief of her young life, which was not the blindness in itself as one might assume. No, she had been told by a specialist when she was sixteen that with one more operation, she would be able to see well enough to drive, and then the specialist had botched the operation and she had woken up to darkness and no ready explanation. The doctor had simply sent her home after accidentally cutting a tiny but essential vein in her eye with a scant apology. Not only had she lost the hope of more vision, but she had been robbed of the precious little she had had in that eye. When I met her, she had a glass eye covering the shriveled remains of what had been her best eye before the surgery. It is telling of her character that she made good use of pulling the glass eye off to the utter delight and horror of her classmates and friends. I found her one day at the center of a group of my students all squealing as she theatrically pulled away the prosthetic to reveal the shriveled organ below. It wasn't until later in our friendship that she revealed the pain it still caused her. Pain was not something she allowed herself to indulge in often as she considered her life to be too occupied with living to do so.

Recently, she was struck with yet another twist of malignant fate: her mother, sister-in-law, and thirteen year old sister were killed by a drunk driver with the two young children in the car just barely surviving. My friend was the first to the hospital of all the family, since her father and brother were working in Iraq. She took the responsibilities of arrangements for the young ones and for the deceased as her family members began to arrive, some with a lack of appropriate response that was tragic in itself. I will spare the details for sake of discretion, but will say this: there is a seed of selfishness that grows so large in some of us as to obstruct any sense of love or proportion. That my friend faced this in the midst of an overwhelming grief and was able to tell me the story only a few months later instead of retreating into a catatonic shell is almost unbelievable to me. She told me of her lost loved ones with tears tracing down her cheeks but in a clear, strong voice. There is certainly no justice in one such as her having to face loss after loss that would cripple most of us. There is only a wonderment to see her soul resurrecting beauty from the ashes.

So to my dear friend, I say this: may your strength be verified as tested, and may you find happiness to the depth of your pain. May we all be better in ourselves simply knowing that someone like you exists and be grateful for the good fortune that allows us to know you and love you.