A lot of things have happened since I last wrote, and while on the outside it might seem that my life is still the same, I feel like an important change has happened within me.
At a street fair today I heard Suzanna Holland. Her singing reminded me of Irish folk tunes and Simon & Garfunkel's "Are you going to Scarborough Fair"; it felt familiar and dear to me. I was standing near the woman for a long while, listening and reading about her life.
Suzanna was born in South Africa and from her childhood she was blind. Her father wanted to make sure that her blindness didn't affect her life and from the early days taught her to combat fear and do anything she likes, walk anywhere she wanted, and live independently. She wrote that she almost hated when people rushed to help her when she didn't ask for help and that she didn't want any special treatment just because she couldn't see.
The snippet that affected me the most was the one where she talked of her mother. Suzanna and her sibling lived far away from their parents and didn't have close contact with them anymore. One day their mum got hit by a car and died almost instantly after the collision. Eyewitnesses of the event say that when asked who they should call and inform of an incident, mother replied "No one. There is no one". Her dead body was left unclaimed at the mortuary for a long time and her children didn't know of what happened to their mother. Suzanna wrote that when they found the body, she felt that seeing their mother all alone in the strange place of dead was the worst punishment they could have received for their neglect of a parent.
The stories that Suzanna wrote about her childhood are touching and encouraging, and her singing is kind and soothing. She is a stranger to me, but for the time that I was reading her life snippets and listening to her guitar, I felt close to that woman. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
This blog post is to our parents.
