A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Eighty-Nine

My grandfather was severely hard of hearing, though not entirely deaf.  It had been a gradual loss, I gather, but had been significant through much of his life, even, he said, in childhood.  When he was older, he had reached a point where one ear had lost so much that it was not useful for it to have a hearing aid.  The other, even with the best devices of the time, could only receive less than ten percent of the normal range of hearing.

He never learned to use sign language, only to read lips, and so whenever he attended any sort of live event, he would sit in the front row so he could see the faces of those speaking without anything blocking him.  I was fortunate to come from a family that enjoyed theater, and I can recall going to many shows with my grandfather.  To be honest, I am not certain how much he really followed of many of these performances, because at the time there was not, to my knowledge, a great deal of support for accommodating the hard of hearing at live events.  This was in the eighties and nineties, and I am certain things changed with that over time, though I cannot say how much my grandfather really availed himself of the available options.  He did not want a great fuss made over his disability and preferred to rely on his ability to read lips, or at least that is my impression.  It may be more that he did not have many other options and adapted as he could.

The truth is, though, I often think about how much he missed.  This is not only in terms of performances, but also in the world at large.  He was often unaware of a great deal that was happening around him, because he could not perceive a fair amount of sensory data from the world.  That is not to suggest he was not engaged with the world, as he most certainly was, in a great many ways.  He very much enjoyed the outdoors, and I grew up spending summers on his sailboat, travelling up and down the Hudson and East Rivers.

I know that he made the best of things, and I do not recall him complaining of his disability in any real sense.  It was a reality of his life, and he did not think about how the world might help to change things for him.  In many ways that is the result of his era, I know, of the ways in which differences in individuals were not recognized except as problems to be dealt with.  But, what I really wonder about is how many people today who suffer from various disabilities still carry the belief that they should adapt to the world, that expecting others to care enough to make a space truly accessible is an imposition at best and, potentially, a dangerous act to be avoided.

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