COPING THROUGH CREATIVITY
When an artist is blinded, a caregiver has to use her imagination
On a beautiful July day in 2002, Eileen and Tom Eddy of Manchester, New Jersey, drove to the nearby shore to look at the ocean. They never dreamed it would be one of the last sights Tom would ever see fully. The following morning he woke up legally blind.For years Tom had had sight only in his left eye. The right had been permanently damaged in his youth when he was hit by a baseball bat during a game. But now the sight in his good eye was too blurry for him to see anything clearly.
At first they weren't terribly alarmed, but when his vision didn't clear after a few days, a doctor suggested Tom see a neurological ophthalmologist. After an exhaustive examination at the Wills Eye Clinic in Philadelphia, doctors came up with a devastating diagnosis: anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy. It's caused by a loss of blood flow to the front of the eye—and it's irreversible.
"We both realized this was it," Eileen says. "It" meaning that the lives of the couple—who are in their seventies—was going to change drastically.
The Eddys were already experienced in rising above tragedy. Eileen had been widowed twice before she and Tom, who was also widowed, married 20 years ago. But now that they were faced with this crisis, Eileen says she "mobilized" immediately. What could she do to help Tom be as independent as possible? He had enough vision left to make out facial features, though not details, and to read extremely large print. So she put all his brown socks into a jiffy bag labeled "Brown" and then did the same with other colors. She stored soups on one shelf of the cupboard, telling Tom where they were, and then she reorganized the refrigerator, putting his soda favorites on one side. She copied the listings in his address book into the computer in huge letters and also put large-sized numbers on the phones. "I must have been going on some kind of adrenaline," she says. She was so thorough that when a woman from the New Jersey Commission for the Blind arrived to instruct her in what to do, "I'd already done everything," Eileen boasts.
Since retiring from his job as vice president of an engineering corporation in 1992, Tom had been painting watercolors as a hobby. It would help his morale to continue, but how? Then they heard about an electronic enlarging machine called a CCTV, which magnifies photos placed on a platform; he paints from the image shown on the screen. But because the CCTV magnifies just a small area at a time, Tom can only paint small pictures, 9x12 inches at most, instead of the large ones he used to create. The machine distorts to some extent, so Eileen-who once ran her own art gallery-tells Tom when she thinks a painting is " overworked here" or "needs more color there." He gets angry, and then invariably realizes she's right.
Despite his never having had formal art training, Tom's watercolors have been exhibited locally in libraries and banks. A painting of the lighthouse in Montauk, Long Island, won an award from the American Printing House for the Blind and was featured in its 2005 Braille Calendar.
And Eileen herself has found a novel form of creativity. In 2003, she began making jewelry. She takes apart costume jewelry and trinkets, adds colorful beads and mounts her designs on broken pieces of 45-rpm records, shaping them into "Collage Brooches." Calling herself "the ultimate recycler," she scouts for vintage items in flea markets and gets jewelry from friends delighted to find a use for that "one earring." The unusual brooches are so attractive, they're increasingly sown and sold in craft shows, and 25 of her pieces were included in 2005 in the prestigious Monmouth, (NJ) Festival of the Arts.
When the blindness struck, the couple was already booked for a tour to Eastern Europe that was to begin three months later. Despite his disability, Tom still wanted to go, and they found it a "surprisingly good trip." The people were wonderful, Eileen says, and let Tom sit in the front of the van. They even joked to the driver that he should let Tom drive. (Tom, who's retained his sense of humor, was good-natured about the banter.) They've been on a number of trips since, though they now find cruises the easiest to deal with. Eileen doesn't know how much Tom can see, but he tells her that whatever he sees is more than he'd seen before, since they're often visiting new places.
On cruises, Eileen gets the daily menus before mealtime and reads them to Tom so he'll know what to order. She does the same thing in local restaurants. "This way I don't have to read the menu to him in front of other people," she says. "I want to feel we're like anyone else, not oddballs." She also wears "a lot of white," because it's easier for him to follow her in a restaurant.
The two have always been avid golfers. Tom still plays, because he's able to see the ball when it's placed in front of him, though he can't see where it goes. Eileen has to tell him where the ball's landed and in which direction he should aim. But Eileen, a five-year golfing champion in their retirement community, says frankly that playing with Tom is no longer enjoyable. "It's too emotional. I can't concentrate on my own game." She now varies her partners, playing with a group of women twice a week.
Tom likes to watch TV, so they bought a new set with a larger picture, but Eileen doesn't want him to feel confined to the house. She frequently says, "Let's get in the car and go someplace." Tom still likes to go to movies, but has to sit in the first row. "I sit farther back, and that's okay with him," she says. Occasionally, they go to New York to see a show, but only if they can get front-row seats.
Looking back, Eileen thinks that, in the beginning, the full extent of the devastation didn't really hit them. "But I'm not ready to throw in the towel on life." In 2004, however, Tom became so depressed that he went on antidepressants, which seem to help. "In our community, we see people who've had cancer and are back to playing golf," Eileen says. "But, as Tom says, ‘We're stuck with this forever.' We may comment on that, but we don't dwell on it. I say, ‘we,'" she adds, "because it's us."