Today's a pretty good day. I got enough sleep (don't know how that happened, I went to sleep around 2 because my computer took too long to defrag) it's sunny out, I'm going to a cool sewing store where I'll hopefully pick up a couple cool new feet for my sewing machine (walking foot! pintuck foot! rolled hem foot! piping foot!) and I'm finally mostly over all my sore muscles that I got helping a couple friends move house.
So today is a good day, right?
Of course right.
But for some reason I'm going to tell you about sad things today. Because that's just how it works.
Number one sad thing is that Dame Judi Dench, the wonderful mistress of the silver screen, has Macular Degeneration. Now, most of you won't know what that is, and why should you? But here's the short version: MD is a degenerative eye disorder where you slowly lose the center of your vision, and everything around it becomes really blurry. For a quick example, put both fists right in front of your eyes maybe an inch or two away. That's what it's like for someone with MD. Your peripheral vision will remain pretty much intact, but it becomes nearly impossible to read or recognize people's faces--even when they're right in front of you.
My Bubby (Jewish Grandmother) has had MD for 10 years now. It's a slow progression, and at the beginning it wasn't so bad. At first, you just think you're vision's going a bit, well that's normal, you're older and things start to fail a bit. (she was around 90 then, she's 101 now) But your center of vision starts to act like a black hole: it just keeps eating away at everything around it until even light can't escape.
The only mercy about it is that it isn't painful at all, at least, not physically. And you certainly can't die from it. But in every other way this disease is 'life-threatening.' Your life as you know it will never be the same. My Bubby was a voracious reader all her life, a great cook, and the most independent minded woman you'd ever meet. Well, that last bit hasn't changed any. But speaking as a voracious reader myself, listening to books on tape is no substitute for reading the words yourself. And cooking becomes dangerous when you can't see what you're doing.
Not that she lets any of this slow her down much. She still lives on her own, pays her own bills, does most of her own cleaning, and she can whup you until next year at Bridge. I did mention she's strong-minded?
But no matter who you are, MD is one of the most frustrating things to happen to you--as are all eye diseases that slowly steal your vision.
I had a theater professor in college who had Retinitis Pigmentosa--a close cousin to MD, where you lose all your peripheral vision and are only left with the center, and even that slowly narrows to nothing. He was one of my favorite professors, and when I first met him he was already considered legally blind, white cane and all. He could still see, but not very much. But he was still teaching, still directing plays, still determined to not let his disease steal away what he loved to do, even if he couldn't stop it stealing away his vision.
And here we slowly circle back to Judi Dench, a renowned actor who's been playing indomitable ladies for so long I suspect it's rubbed off a bit (or that's just how she is--wowza!). She's 77 years old and she's not letting MD stop her from doing what she wants, she still intends to continue acting as long as possible.
Which is great. The world would be a sadder place without Dame Judi Dench. So perhaps this could be seen as a positive thing, a message of hope where you see that a wonderful woman won't let life get her down.
But I find it somewhat sad too. Having seen close up how difficult MD is to deal with, I just wish this hadn't happened.
And number two sad thing isn't really sad (depending on your point of view) so lets wish Alan Rickman a Happy Birthday! He's 66!
(cue sad shoulder slump)
Why can't the best actors just stop aging? Why can't we keep them forever?
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