Related topics: •  Aging and Vision Care: The Eyes Have It •  Macular Degeneration (Seniors)

Twilight: Losing Sight, Gaining Insight
By Henry Grunwald
Alfred A. Knopf
144 pp. $20

After years of being on "close terms with the written word," Henry Grunwald is almost completely blind. He has age-related macular degeneration, a retinal disease that affects more than 10 million Americans and for which there is no cure.

That doesn't keep the former editor-in-chief of Time Inc. and ambassador to Austria from chronicling his descent into darkness in print. This is less his autobiography than it is a chronicle of his attempts to adjust to his condition. This is a story of his eyes.

Most of us live uneasily with regret over the things we have lost, even if we have not lost sight. Memories are flickers of events we have witnessed, people whose faces we adore, pieces of art that strike our fancy. But when the sense that allows us to enjoy these things fades, much of our pleasure goes with it.

Don't mistake this for a feel-good autobiography of living with macular degeneration. Grunwald does not go gently as macular degeneration progressively robs him of intimate moments: the pleasure of gazing at faces, scenes, and paintings. He persists in going to museums, in Europe and in New York, his home town, where he wanders with a tape-recorded tour. He can't tell if he can really see the little monkey in Georges Seurat's painting, La Grande Jatte, or if he only imagines it. He insists on walking down subway stairs and crossing streets, cautious and mostly unaided. And he begins to notice others around him whose sight is also weakening.

"I found myself observing details of behavior in people that would not have caught my attention while my eyesight was normal. I noticed when someone was particularly careful walking down steps or when someone else was holding a menu very close to his eyes or looking at me in a somewhat vague, unfocused manner. Before long, I realized that these were signs of macular degeneration. Many people tried to hide it. An occasional pretense was to say, 'How stupid, I forgot my glasses.' Or possibly: 'I just had an eye exam, and with these drops, I can't see a thing.' Most were reluctant to talk about the real problem. But others, when they found out that I was also a 'macular degenerate,' were eager to compare our experiences. I began to feel that I was joining, involuntarily, a secret society."

There are a series of frustrating eye operations, after which some sight returns, but fades again. Grunwald includes a short history of eye diseases and their treatment. In India, he recounts, surgeons practicing eye surgery punctured the pupil with a thin reed to remove cataract-diseased lenses. Needless to say, this was a risky procedure, but reportedly actually helped some patients. Surgeons who were unsuccessful at restoring sight, however, had their noses cut off.

Grunwald isn't entirely unaware that his losses may sound minor, even irritating, to some people. He compares himself to others who are more successful at living with their loss of sight, including writer James Thurber, whose eye was shot out by an arrow at age 6. Thurber eventually lost most of his eyesight, but continued to write unhampered by blindness. He does measure the balance of what he has lost against the things he still has. He revels in the fact that he doesn't have Alzheimer's disease, that he can still "read" with the aid of readers. Most of his experiences are not cheerful, but there are wry moments of humor.

He describes, in detail, stumbling into a dressing room in Paris looking for his wife and encountering a strange woman trying on a gown. He backs out hastily and encounters his wife, Louise, who tells him he has just missed seeing French actress Catherine Deneuve. "I missed the chance at seeing her close up -- very close up," he recalls.

In another instance, Grunwald describes a party at which he recognizes a tall, striking blonde. Ready to hail his friend and television anchor Diane Sawyer, he stops at the last moment when he realizes he is in the presence of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Some sightless people are unlikely to relate to Grunwald's awkward moments with luminaries. But there are still nuggets of wisdom that most can appreciate. There are still instances when after surgery on his eyes, Grunwald fervently believes sight is returning, but when it doesn't, his recounting of regret is illuminating: "We resist the idea that damage is not the exception but the rule -- part of the tissue of life. But once we accept this, life itself begins to look different."

-- Psyche Pascual, a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, is articles editor for Consumer Health Interactive.

First published October 20, 2000
Last updated February 26, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive

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