Lidsky writes withoutany grandiosity about the debilitating
visual degeneration he went through, or the total blindness that is now a daily
reality.
“With hard work comes strength; with practice, mastery,” he said without pretense about his struggles with the progression from seeing to the realities that a blind person encounters every moment.
Discouragement, disappointment, frustrations are compounded
when one goes through major life changes. At the back of your mind, you
wonder how long people will stick around a dejevted person, and how much they can bear to look
at what you are going through. Many don’t and that’s the only way they know how
to respond. Who can stand being around someone with no more laughter, no more
imagination, and when is there no more emotional and esteem benefits for sticking
around. Yet he wrote about his wife Dorothy, “She never doubted that I would
provide for our family. Decision by insane decision, she was there for me. It
was fine by her if her fancy lawyer husband wanted to reinvent himself as a
construction guy. Her reward? I turned our lives upside down. In New York we
had dreamed I would build a business empire. Last week I told her I would
likely file a personal bankruptcy.”
And his Jewish mother stood by him. “Please be good to
yourself, tatele. (a Yiddish term of endearment or little boy) She heard the pain
in my voice. She wanted to save me.” Only mothers do that: some mothers. They
can hear pain, but you have to make the phone call. She gave him her entire
life savings of $350K in a duffel bag and walked back to her car. That’s what
some mums do because hope is priceless and they would do anything to bring that
back to life.
It is not mentioned in the book but perhaps these two women
are walking by faith and not by sight, and it is a faith that rests not in a
man’s talents and abilities, but in God who is larger than the man they both love.
Some people face debilitating diseases like Lidsky, some
face the unexpected death of a loved one, others battle life-long depression or
deal with crushing post-divorce realities. The world doesn’t need another ‘do
this and you’ll be fine’ book under self-help or Christian titles. Nothing in
this book claims that promise. If anything, it preaches vulnerability and urges
those going through their dreaded and irreversible D’s to breath and focus on
the flow of taking things one step at a time. For many of these on many days, those are
big steps: to focus and to keep moving.
For a book titled “Eyes Wide Open”, he ends with chapter 8
titled “Heart Wide Open.” Lidsky says, “I’m a funny blind guy with an open
heart.” I think so too.