My blind sister Eva Ibolya – LIFE AS A HUMAN

NANNA: (SISTER)

I am blind. I cannot help my mother.
My husband left food out for us this morning.
The social worker said I should place mother.
She fell out of her chair, dozing. I tried to feel where she was.
Didn’t know where her head or her buttocks were.
The social worker is the assessor: He’ll decide if it’s safe here.

I don’t feel bad for me: Mourn what I lost— my eyesight.
The day I went blind, November 21, 2004, sister Erna was
visiting from Los Angeles with her granddaughter. She helped me.
We should sell the bungalow, I said to my husband. ‘I worked
forty years to have a house,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to sell.’

When my seven-year-old grandson visits, he asks:
‘Nana, can you really not see me?’
I tell him: You know I have you etched in my mind.
Touch Nana’s hand, I can hug and kiss you.
I know my children feel sadness in their hearts.

My daughter Angela is like you, Ilona. She loves to write.
I found that out, when she read the essays I wrote for
the Institute for the Blind. My daughter-in-law, Lisa,
gave me a tape recorder: ‘To keep you occupied,’ she said.
We go out as companions. The Institute gives free tickets
to plays and concerts. Last week we saw, It’s A Wonderful Life.

I don’t want to be a vegetable. I lost the battle with my eyes—
Had to tap into myself. Clients at the flea market knew me
as an aggressive vendor. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear.
‘She can’t see,’ they said. There is the rest of me.
Blind people are still human beings.

I sit here surrounded by four walls:
Have no reason to get dressed. I see darkness only.
I visualize removing the walls. The sun coming up.
Sitting in the garden. I have the white cane to find out,
if there is a hole, I could fall into.
Too bad, you live so far away—
It would help to have someone to lean on.

Photo Credit

Photos courtesy of Ilona Martonfi

Guest Author Bio

Ilona Martonfi
Ilona Martonfi A first book of poems, Blue Poppy, was published with Coracle Press in 2009. A second collection, Black Grass, (Broken Rules Press) published 2012. Poems have appeared in Vallum, Accenti, The Fiddlehead, Serai, and various other magazines. Poet, editor, teacher. Founder and producer/host of The Yellow Door and Visual Arts Centre Poetry and Prose Readings, co-founder of Lovers and Others. I won the QWF 2010 Community Award.