A 92 Year Old Blind and Deaf Woman to the Rescue
Feb 13, 2025
It was freakin’ hot today.
January was so radically different than February. It was like the rain shut off and the heater turned on to maximum heat.
Add to that the humidity left from a month of rain and you get hot and sticky and a lot of swass, swoob, and swussy.
I dive into the pool and float on my back for a while. The water is perfect, and it feels like I’m floating in a cloud. I love moving my arms ever so gently and feeling the little ripples of water move like a whisper.
I move to the edge of the infinity pool and look over the rice fields. I feel peaceful, and centered and at home.
All of a sudden out of nowhere a face pops up about six inches in front of me. So close my focus is not clear.
I jump in surprise.
Right in front of me is a cross eyed older woman with well tanned skin.
“Hello there, are you the woman who is staying in that room?” She points in front of her.
Yes I nod.
“I’m 92 and can’t see and can’t hear very well but I would love to talk to you.” She said.
Hmmm I was having such a lovely moment I felt a twinge of irritation.
If I’m transparent I have felt funny about talking to older people. I know I know that sounds terrible and I can hear the audible gasp- and I even gasp a little bit, but there it is - out in the open.
When I was in my teen years, my Grandma Thressa had a massive stroke which left her paralyzed on 1/2 of her body.
This impacted her ability to speak. And according to my mother, she used to love to talk. So when I would visit she would play a guessing game with me about the topic we were discussing. She would generally start by going through the list including my sisters and brother and mom and dad.
We would go through the obvious questions she would want to know- how they were doing and any plans they might have.
When that ran out I’d make small talk about anything I could come up with until my internal timer went off telling me I had been polite enough to exit stage left.
It pained me, like honestly pained my soul to see her that way. I felt a mixture of guilt, compassion, and fear that I might one day experience the hell of being imprisoned in my own body.
And ever since then, I have steered clear of anyone older than eighty.
And here was someone that was 92, well over my threshold.
She began to tell me about her current life. She lived at the same place I was staying since 2009, and was married to the love of her life for the past 24. Out of those years, 18 was blissful and the most beautiful gift in her life. But in the last 6 years she had gone blind and her lover developed dimensia and kept forgetting she was blind and deaf.
I met with her with compassion and could tell she obviously could use a friend.
She gets up each day and lays out by the pool, and swims laps in the pool while her partner works out at the gym and then they would have breakfast.
Every day, same routine, day in and day out. She shared how hard this was, and how she missed her dear Carlo most of all.
For most of her life she was a world traveler and lover of life. And now her world is walking down to the pool and back up to her home.
I can’t even imagine…..
But at the very end she said, “I’d love to tell you my love story if you’d consider coming up to my place sometime.”
Hmmm love story?
That sounds magical.
I commit to doing that when my time alotted and went back into room.
Her presence did something to me. Like her wisdom shone in those eyes even though they the vision was gone.
The next day, I saw her right after she had breakfast and mentioned that I would love to see her room and visit.
It amazes me that she can get around. Like her room is on the second floor for heaven’s sake!
How does a blind and deaf woman do anything at all is another question? I am watching Helen Keller in action, and it’s brilliant and so inspirational it takes my breath away.
She shows me upstairs and says she is so grateful for the white tile flowers on each stair because they are the only thing she can see and the reason why she can go up and down the staircase.
She mentions her laundry on the patio and once again I am floored that this woman with limited function, living with another human with limited functions can live a life of independence.
I’d soon find out that this was the tip of the iceberg in terms of independence in body and spirit.
She brought me to her back porch overlooking the rice fields and lines with bookshelves packed to the brim with well read and well worn books.
“I started reading the New York Times at three. Reading is the thing I miss the most.” She said.
Now folks, that means she was reading at three in 1922 if y’all are good at math.
Like think about it, she has lived through the roaring 20’s, gone through more wars than I can count. Lived through the Industrial Revolution and the age of technology so radically advanced going from relying on Lamborfeeties and horses to the X-43 that can fly 7400 miles per hour.
What the hay….
I am sitting on the patio with an empress of knowledge and wisdom.
So glad I got over myself. So glad I’m meeting and clearing some resistance that has kept me from learning from some of our wisest humans on the planet.
….Keep doing that so I can do this….I remind myself.
She starts by telling me how sexual she was from a young age.
Wow- we are already going there I smile.
She doesn’t apologize at all for sharing one of her greatest loves of this life- her sexual energy.
She tells me that she started by pulling boys into the closet and kissing them at school.
At 17 she decided she didn’t want to be a virgin and asked a Greek God of a man to take her to his room in manhattan.
Wow! Really?
Then she discussed how she traveled to Berkeley and then Taos New Mexico until she met her twin flame when she wasn’t looking.
She had vowed a promise of celibacy for three years and then met this man from Switzerland in the perfect and divine timing.
I asked her why she took a vow of celibacy.
And her answer?
“I didn’t know how to connect to others outside of sex and I wanted to move past this and into more connection.”
I considered myself.
Perhaps it was a gift that I had learned only connection with others outside of sex.
I hadn’t considered that.
When your body doesn’t respond in that way it can feel like it’s broken.
I’m certainly not broken and never have been, but it has felt that way at times.
In a way I can relate
I just turned off the spigot because it was too much, I was too much and it seemed to create pain and shame.
I was a very sexual young girl. Like I was the one finding the strategic jet in the hot tub. The one super curious about tampons and my grandmas douche in the bathroom closet.
I played my fair share of doctor until one day a girl that was playing with us started crying and telling us that she was going to hell.
I felt so ashamed. I deeply hurt someone because of my big and almost overwhelming burning desires within.
So I shut it off completely.
Add to the shame from being raped and gang raped and I allowed my sexual energy to not unite with anyone else’s.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t enjoy it at all- but I had no idea what it could be until I learned at 50 years of age how wonderful a loving universe is to allow us to feel that good.
That connected. That loved.
What a gift it is to know I connect outside of that energy but that I can connect in even higher realms when I choose to unite body mind and spirit with another.
I’m incredibly grateful that I get to learn reunification with a man that loves me enough to not take it deeply personal.
How many marriages would have been over if they had gone through the same thing?
Deep gratitude for a journey that has led me back to my whole being.
And it’s definitely not fully expressed.
It’s one of the things I’m here to discover and to meet with grace and forgiveness and love.
And let’s get the gossip out of the way- that doesn’t mean I’m sharing this with anyone outside of me.
Wouldn’t that defeat the point of me being alone?
It means that I reconnect with this ancient part of me, this portal of love with me and by me.
I share this with my new friend Tema, and she holds my hand and cries with me for a while.
I grieve the loss of a girl that thought she was broken and too much.
I grieve a girl that disconnected for herself.
And I celebrate a woman who was brave enough to find her once again.
She finds out I’m doing breath-work for three days with a group in town and says, “take that breath and send it all the way down to your vagina, use that light from a loving universe and let the light heal that part of you.”
It was like healing balm to my soul. Her words were true even though I was still a little shocked that this 92 blind and deaf woman used the word vagina after meeting me 2; hours before.
I love how unapologetic she is for being truly her.
As I left she said, “Bali has asked you to come to her so she can bring you the people and the experiences that will unite you with your wholeness again. Magic is happening right now for you.”
Yes Tema you are indeed magic.
Thank you my angelic friend.
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