SISTER RAIN SEDONA WEEK
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A little more than a month before I woke up blind, my husband and I returned to Sedona, Arizona for a week. I have been fortunate to have traveled often, and I would say Sedona is at the top of my list. Ever since my vision loss, I have wanted to go back but did not know how I would feel being in that stunningly beautiful place but unable to incredulously gaze at its Sedonaness. This topic was discussed many times in therapy, especially in the early years, when going anywhere seemed impossible. As time passed, however, road trips to New Jersey, Washington DC, New England, Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, New York took place, as well as airline vacations to Seattle and Germany. They were all terrific adventures but Sedona was always on my mind.
With these journeys and other accomplishments bolstering my understanding of the new me, I was finally ready to return to Sedona. It was the final piece to putting my life back together. I had learned a thing or two about moving through the world without being able to look at it the way I once had. I would like to share them with you:
It is first and foremost about who you are with.
I touch. I pick things up, getting close and personal with them.
I smell. I have always had a super sniffer, but anymore I detect an odor about 15 minutes before everyone else.
I hear. My ears are not as great as my nose, but they are pretty darn good. I notice sounds I would not have before I became legally blind.
I taste. Clam chowder in Nantucket, crab while overlooking Puget Sound, apple cinnamon french toast in Plymouth.
Photos displayed on my iPad are viewed better than live and in person, or even on my iPhone, colors too. When I am somewhere now, I am using all my senses, including sight, but it can no longer compare to its sensory comrades. Then, I get to meet the pictures, creating a fully immersed experience I did not have when the visual was paramount.
I will not lie to you though. I do yearn for proper optical ability. There were moments of sadness in Sedona, grieving still left to do after eleven years. But I have come so far from that morning when I found both my eyes completely dark. One of my favorite places in Sedona is the Chapel of the Holy Cross, a spectacular architectural masterpiece that I find extremely moving. As I sat inside, I cried for the woman who also came to this spiritual place a decade ago with her 20/20 acuity. But mostly I wept in gratitude for my life, my husband, my friends, my therapist, the work I have done on myself, the financial, physical, emotional and mental components that allowed me to be back in my beloved Sedona. How can two damaged optic nerves compete with all those blessings?
I will not say I have put my old life behind me. I am far enough along in the psychological healing process of what has happened to me to know that I will miss my vision for the rest of my life. Some days that longing can be as fresh as it was in early 2013. I am not free of my past. But after this trip to Sedona, I know that I am free of what is to come. I am no longer afraid of what I cannot see for I have touched the base of a giant saguaro cactus, I have smelled the piñon pine, I have heard the snorts of the wild javelinas in our rental house backyard at night, I have tasted fried cactus. I have made out the outline of giant, ancient rock formations that welcomed me back . . . to my future.
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