GOODBYE, MY ARTIFICIAL SIGHT
I THREW MY TREASURED GLASSES INTO THE DUSTBIN
I did not anticipate or envisage this tumultuous and sudden truncation of our enjoyable and beneficial relationship. It had seemed destined to last a longer time, many years. It would be a disservice to your memory if fail to write this tribute to you. I will consider myself an ingrate. You came into my life at a time I needed to beef up my sight with external addition. I had been offered an opportunity to leave my base for the next number of months in search of knowledge. I did not want to go to an environment of people I did not know asking for assistance to read. They would have known that something was amiss and would have gone ahead to ask, what's wrong with your sight?" They would have given the now familiar counsel, "go and get recommended glasses." Then, i had to do some thing. And off i went to an optician. He tabled before me an array of frames, different shapes and sizes. I choose you out of the lot. And there and then you were coopted into my life. You synced seamlessly into my lifestyle. And what a good job you made out of it, what a contribution you provided. Your entrance made an immediate impact. I never had strain, stretch, think, guess to know who was talking to me from a short distance away. You became so used to me and i to you so much that some described me with you, "oloju igo". A number of pessimmists even said it to my face that i could not see without you. Since that day in 2014, you have been an inseparable part and partner of mine. Everywhere I went to, you were there, as my co-traveller. Everyone, who saw me automatically knew you. You were my twin brother, my siamese partner sort of. You completed and complimented my dressing. You made my face look good and most importantly, aided my sight, made it perform its task of viewing things, people easier and better than before. You enabled me to have a clearer view of objects that were meters away. I remember toying with the idea of writing on the influence you had on my sight when i brought you on board. It was in my head for a few weeks before i jettisoned it. The influence you had on me was a great, indescribable instant relief, which words cannot encapsulate. As my view improved, somehow, my imagination soared too. I cannot figure the correlation but the mechanism happened. I realised how well I had shortchanged myself by refusing to replace your predecessor. Twelve years had lapsed inbetween you and my first pair.
On my part, I treated you with care and respect. I did not allow you to fall off my eyes to the floor even once. I ensured no liquid not even water reached you. I prepared a special place for you to rest at night. I cared for you as if you were a child. Everytime, the need to take you off my eyes arose, I ensured I held you in my hand. But yesterday, the romance was aborted, suddenly and unceremoniously. That evening, that sudden accident, between your fragile self and the wooden door, is etched in my memory. The system, the perrenial surmountable but deliberately neglected infrastructural defiency was the cause. I was in the kitchen washing some greasy substances off my hands when Power Holding Company of Nigeria decided to withdraw light. Darkness envelope everywhere. Instinctly and uncharacteristically, i left the spot, moved to the doorway. I ought to have removed you but i did not. I wanted to avoid staining you with my dirty hand. The next thing i heard was shattering resulting from the collision. I raised my right hand to check your condition. Alas! the right lens was gone. Out of dissapointment and being fully aware of the implication, i removed and tossed you into the waste basket. And straight i headed for my bed to hit the sack. I did not want to think of the implications of that mishap. They were too numerous and weighty to give a thought. Its like rehashing unpleasant experiences after regaining freedom. When my daughter called my attention to it the following morning saying, daddy, why did you put your glasses in the dustbin, i felt bad that i was unfair to you.
You were not my first pair. No, at all. My romance with eye glass came as a child of necessity, rather I acquired it when all other choices had failed to provide succour and relief. I have never been a lover of emphasis on pulchritude, not to talk of fashion spectacles. It made no sense to me. After a few years, about 12 to be precise, of staying away from the pain of short sightedness, called myopia, I swallowed my pride. Whatever the cause was, it had rebuffed all efforts and attempts to find a remedy.
The journey of no return began on a sunny afternoon during our Chemistry class work. We were copying our teacher's (a petite Indian woman) note from the blackboard. My seat was in the middle of the class. I had written the lesson haĺfway, when I realised that the letters were in doubles. I asked my friend who sat by my side and he said it was not so. To cut a long story short, that was the last day and time I wrote my lesson note directly from the board. The last three years of my Secondary School days were spent copying from my classmates notebooks. A elderly woman had procured agunmu, a powdery local remedy for me then and i was healed, completely. Young people tend ti be reckless. But then i relapsed to my old habit and the short sightedness accompanied it back. That lasted twelve years before it packed up.
By the time you came, you were dealing with an exoerienced and more matured lover. Any man or woman marrying again has some experience, lessons acquired from the earlier misadventure. I used my repertoire of lessons to guide our union. When the truncated came, though abrupt and unwanted, you were overdue for replacement. You had aged and thereby weak in performance. That Notwithstanding, the next days were calamitous for me. I would put my hand into your 'bed' everyday, ostensibly to pick you up before leaving for office. Not only that. Out there, i battled recognising people. The memory that rushed through my head when i heard that shattering clash became a reality.
All said and done, i brought you out of the dustbin the second day. I check and realised that your upper right frame was broken following the clash. I did not see the right len again. The dustbin cannot be your final resting place; it could not.
Life is set in a way that people meet somewhere along the way. If there is the chemistry, they gel and become friends, business partners, lovers and family friends. Some result in change of fortunes. And if not, they go their separate ways. Whichever type it results into, one day, one fateful day separation will come in form of home call, through death. It occurred to us that Sunday evening. You would never go out with me again as the time allotted our relationship had lapsed.
Thank you my ally.
I am still sore missing you.
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