Can You Hear the Wind?

Part of my job involved driving between several schools each day to work with students.  Many of the schools were set in rural locations, with trees all around and often bordered by fields of corn or soybeans.  When I walked between my car and the buildings I could usually hear wind blowing through the trees and the calls of birds.  After a while I learned to park at the farthest-away space, so I'd get more exercise and be outside as much as possible.

The most difficult part of returning to work at the end of the summer was leaving all those sounds of nature behind.  Sure, I found a few CDs of bird calls and songs to listen to while I did my paperwork, but it wasn't quite the same as being immersed in the auditory delights I found outside for hours each day.

Today I accompanied my husband to his evaluation for a new set of hearing aids.  When he first received his aids in 2012 they worked pretty well and he was his sharp, funny self again, but his hearing loss progressed and the first set wasn't quite cutting it anymore.

When the time came to discuss the cost I was prepared for the shocking sum.  Maybe calculators and computers have gotten cheaper over the years, but not hearing aids.  I didn't expect the price to have decreased over the last five years and it didn't, it even went up a little.

We sat there with the audiologist and I stayed as quiet as possible while my husband asked a few more questions and, basically, stalled for time to make a decision.  He finally said yes.

If he had said the opposite, there would be more years spent watching his fun-loving, clever self cloaked by the interference of misunderstanding other's words and possibly having people reduce the amount of detail, vocabulary, energy spent in communicating with him.  After a while you just tell a person the basics of a story, or keep a quick comment to yourself, when they don't hear your words the first or second time.  Hearing loss reduces the richness of your interpersonal life, it's not just about missing the birds singing or the rush of wind through the trees.

A couple of years ago I saw a long-time friend at a big dinner held at a noisy restaurant.  After sitting with him for the evening I got up the nerve to ask him if he had had surgery to help his hearing loss, or if he was wearing a new hearing aid.  I was astounded at how well he kept up with the conversations around him.  He smiled and told me that his hearing had decreased so significantly over time that surgery and aids would no longer be of help to him.  So, he learned to read lips.

It's that important, hearing is.  If my husband can be helped by us buying hearing aids for him, and if
he'll wear them consistently, I'll gladly save up the money to pay the ridiculously-high cost.  The richness of his life is worth it.

Tucker enjoys the wind at Old Rag Mountain
Photo by J. G. Collier