Becky Dearborn has been going blind gradually since the age of 21. Today she can only see bright sunlight. Everything else is dark. Her world has shrunken to a safe area of 90 feet surrounding her house. Her hands are her eyes: always searching with the top of her fingers and always stumbling over the same rugs and couches. She's lost in her own house. Does her visual handicap create a social exclusion? Why doesn't her husband or her son answer when she asks where they've put the can of corn? Slowly they became strangers to her. She's the housewife that cooks for everyone but eats alone. As Becky's sight deteriorates, her husband and son fade further into the shadows. Still caught in the traditional family routine, no one in the family, including Becky, is responding to her visual handicap. PHOTO BY JELLE WILDIERS / MPW.60
  • Touching Blindness
  • By JELLE WILDIERS
  • The 60th Missouri Photo Workshop / St. James, Mo.
  • Becky Dearborn has been going blind gradually since the age of 21. Today she can only see bright sunlight. Everything else is dark. Her world has shrunken to a safe area of 90 feet surrounding her house. Her hands are her eyes: always searching with the top of her fingers and always stumbling over the same rugs and couches. She's lost in her own house.

    Does her visual handicap create a social exclusion? Why doesn't her husband or her son answer when she asks where they've put the can of corn? Slowly they became strangers to her. She's the housewife that cooks for everyone but eats alone.

    As Becky's sight deteriorates, her husband and son fade further into the shadows. Still caught in the traditional family routine, no one in the family, including Becky, is responding to her visual handicap.

    "I couldn't do it without the Lord, He shows me the way." Becky's holding on to the last bit of hope. It isn't coming from her family, it's coming from above.



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