What do you do when it hurts to see?

Lori McCray

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Oct 30, 2023

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Have spent nearly a lifetime clearing these clouds of ignorance, and now that my vision has been restored, now that I see with the eyes given me at birth, I need strength enough to bear it.

For all my weeping, voluminous weeping, Biblical weeping, my eyes are suddenly a stinging sand storm. Seeing literally hurts me. What do you do when it hurts to see? You can’t return to darkness, but light at its brightest is impossible to bear.

Sure there are measures of compromise; the hats and glasses and eyedrops, the warm compress, Omega-3, but it’s really about faith. Job thought that he was being punished (thank God I’m beyond that). I’m grateful for my vision, which was, after all, the point of surgery. Has anyone ever complained their surgeon did too fine a job?

I want to be more patient, yet I want to skip quickly over the hard part, skip ahead to the skipping happily through the sunny meadow. Winter is coming (when it’s done being 80). The glare of sun on ice is powerful, as I recall. I will be fine by then. I will enjoy my outings without squinting and scrunching and fussing about the sun. I have always loved the sun, but its brilliance is too much for me.

Back to weeping, then, for the healing of the tears which soften, soothe and cleanse, for the clarity, so that I might go on seeing.

LBM 10/30/2023