20/20 Vision

I've heard that hindsight is 20/20. I think I agree. I probably wasn't born with 20/20 vision, so I'll take it as hindsight.

Today it was back to Kaiser Medical Facility, back to the optometry department. Mr. Fun accompanied me to a morning appointment to see the optometrist. I had had a previous appointment in early October and ordered eyeglasses with the new lense subscription issued at that time. Two weeks later I picked-up my new glasses and realized I immediately felt like I had crawled into a fishbowl.

"Ah, no problem," the attendant said. "You'll need to adjust to them."

RIGHT! It did not take me two hours to decide that was malarkey. So the old pair of glasses once again became my main pair.

A few weeks later, I decided I had been swindled and went back to the eyeglass attendant who was oh so helpful and ordered new lenses to be produced and fitted to the frames because certainly "faulty lenses were the problem."

Two weeks later I once again placed glasses with new lenses on my face and found myself back inside the fishbowl. Again I was told, "You'll adjust. Just wear them."

I walked away shaking my head and placing my faithful old pair on my face. So today was the second appointment with the doctor, the optometrist. Different optometrist than the one who checked my eyes in October. "Aw," she said, "Dr. So-and-So was a little aggressive back in October and order a lense that was possibly too strong."

Well, I now am awaiting the newest pair of eyeglasses. This time not so strong, and maybe, just maybe, this will produce vision minus the fishbowl. So Mr. Fun and I exited the optometry world and I thought our vision lesson for the day had concluded. Not so.

The afternoon included a two o'clock "Celebration of Life" at our community's mortuary. A roomful of people, probably close to 200, had gathered not because a fellow had died, but because he had lived. Mr. Fun, due to his profession, has mixed and mingled with senior citizens for close to 30 years. So he knows many of them in our town.

Because I am usually at work in a classroom, I do not get to accompany Mr. Fun to these occasions. So as I sat there, I realized I was again revisiting the subject of vision.

No less than six people went to the microphone to tell stories about this deceased man who had been born (1920) and raised in our city. He had not only graduated from the local high school (1938), he had married his school girl sweetheart, and after his military duty and the war were over, he became a local businessman and community leader. I listened as this older generation honored one of their own.

From a distance, people could label him a businessman, a property owner, a wealthy man with a name that stood tall in this Circle City of Corona; however, up close and personal, at today's celebration, he was recognized and lauded as a giving man, very generous; an honest man; a quiet man with a dry witty humor. A man who learned about and mastered computers all on his own in the golden years of his life. A man who had lived with more than a pocketful of loneliness the past four years since his wife of 64 years had passed away.

I watched with cautioned alarm as those elderly men and women, his friends, slowly moved toward the microphone. Some of our elders have become quite elderly.

When the service concluded I hugged and spoke with no less than a dozen people who I'd like to see again before attending their "celebration of life."

This afternoon we viewed Raymond Harris’s life through the lense of hindsight. Today I was able to see that his life was not only successful, it was significant.

This was a visionary day. A 20/20 hindsight kind of day.

From here, on the western edge of the United States of America with a moon just beyond full rising in the dark eastern sky, I wish you sight, even if it is hindsight.

~~Rosie (& Mr. Fun),aka Carol