During the last years my painting has become freer than ever before. I have also written more than at any other time in my life. I have felt it urgent to finish my painting and writing and to photograph as much as possible NOW. Was that an inner voice telling me that I might die some time soon?

I am fifty-seven and my life was feeling very good. Ten days ago I thought I was living a pretty perfect life. That afternoon I played table games with my grandsons and realized I could not follow the dice with my eyes and have now been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a dystrophy of both retinas, which may lead to blindness. I understand so much about my life now: clumsiness, poor balance and a propensity for running into things as well as people complaining that I do not see them on the streets when they greet me.

The diagnosis threw me into a crisis: my days are an emotional roller coaster – moments of panic and then, surprisingly long periods of deep calm. Where the calm comes from, I do not know. Perhaps it is the result of my sticking my nose into the Buddha’s teachings for so many years. Or perhaps it is heaven-sent grace. I can almost see my mind grinding and sense that the most intense psychotherapy imaginable is happening all by itself within me right now.

I now often experience panic attacks. They put my entire Buddhist learning to the test. I walk on the edge of life with a thousand wise words from countless masters in my mind. Will my beliefs sustain me? I breathe. I put my hands on my belly and I let the fear slowly flow out of me into the cold autumn air in the room. I remember how during the first twenty years of my life I suffered from recurrent night terrors. I would awaken in the dead of night, scared to death that the devil, Virgin Mary or Death itself were going to appear before me. Each represented the same ultimate horror: craziness and death. Now, I ponder how strange that my poor eyesight probably showed me less than most people see while I feared the possibility I might see what they could not.

In the morning when I awaken, I open and close my eyes. I see worms of bluish - white light racing in circles. Often during the day my eyes itch.

I hold a cup of tea in my hands sitting in the autumn morning cold, the hot liquid warming my hands; I close my eyes to feel more deeply the joy. So it is when I get in between the bed sheets at night so that I may more fully appreciate their coolness and smoothness, and so it is, too, when the hot water of the shower hits me.

Lately I have thought about that which we call ‘destiny’ in a new way. I never have asked, "Why me?” As a psychotherapist I hear many stories. I do know that life hurts.

Why not me?

Does destiny come to us from outside or inside?

My illness is genetic. You would say that it comes from what we call “the inside”. It seems, though, that this fate befalls me from “the outside”. Can we divide the inside from the outside? Where is the borderline?

People encourage me, “When you lose sight you can gain insight!” Others tell me that there must be something that I do not want to SEE! Finally I notice that most other people don’t want to talk about my eyes long. They are relieved when we change to other topics. To my surprise I discover that I am relieved also.

When I came to Mexico, fell in love with the man who would become my husband and left Germany behind; it was the death of a life which I had led so far. I mourned my lost life. After a few months I took up some brushes and color pots and painted a picture. I had never planned that, but just followed an impulse. This was the beginning of a completely new life: I became a painter!

Now I am losing what I most need to be a painter. The writer John Hull says that blindness destroys the person you are and you have to reassemble that person anew. I assembled myself in a new way in Mexico. Why shouldn’t I be able to accomplish that again?

I wake up in the morning and brush my teeth. The day unfolds. It seems that in no time I am brushing my teeth again to get back in bed, the days of my precious life running away between my fingers….

So many things, which
I have tried or let pass by –
Now the storms of fall