My grandfather would smile and nod a lot. Now I understand. I wasn’t always hard of hearing. It sneaked up on me. People who mumbled and failed to enunciate their words properly increasingly began to annoy me.
“You should get a refund on those elocution lessons,” I wanted to say, but politeness restrained me.
I couldn’t deny that my hearing had deteriorated a little, but just a little. No big deal.
During an annual medical checkup, I casually mentioned I thought my hearing had deteriorated, which earned me a trip to a specialist. That made it official — I was hard of hearing, but not to the point where I absolutely needed hearing aids.
No sir, I reasoned, hearing aids are for old people, for people with a handicap, and so I was guilty of a sort of prejudice that I now sometimes accuse others of.
Other than determining that my hearing level was substandard, the specialist couldn’t shed much light on the cause of my disability. I had not attended loud concerts, so heavy metal wasn’t to blame. I did not crank up music to hazardous levels. I had not worked around noisy machinery or spent much time near gunfire or explosions.
I managed. For a while. Interviews were sometimes a problem, so I began to use a recorder, rather than just relying on notes. I would move closer to people when they spoke to me, but not so close as to invade their personal space.
Then my wife went to work for an ear, nose and throat specialist, who dealt daily with hearing problems. The more she learned, the harder it was to pretend I didn’t have a problem or that my hearing wasn’t continuing to deteriorate.
Get a hearing test, she suggested gently. And frequently. I think she was getting a little weary of the fact that “pardon me?” was the most common phrase in our conversations. That, and “could you turn the TV up a little?”
She finally persuaded me. The ENT doctor examined me thoroughly and turned me over to the audiologist. The vote for hearing aids was unanimous — even I had to admit it was the right choice.
My hearing aids were tiny, barely noticeable, but they made a big difference. They’re technologically marvellous, able to be adjusted to pick up different frequencies at various volumes. They help me considerably, but they cannot give me normal hearing. They cannot separate sounds — hearing one person in a crowded room is almost impossible. The rattling of a piece of paper close to me obscures the sound of a person talking a few metres away.
If a person tells me something confidential in a conspiratorial whisper, the secret is safe, because I wouldn’t have heard a word. Words spoken by someone facing away from me are generally inaudible.
I have been given a glimpse of what life is like for those who have profound hearing loss or no hearing at all. It tends to make you withdraw into your own world. It makes you reluctant to engage in conversations.
As my grandmother lay in a hospital bed, near the end of her struggle with lung cancer, my grandfather held her hand. She spoke to him, important things she wanted to say to him, but she couldn’t speak above a whisper and he couldn’t hear. He bowed his head and wept. Words are so important.
A few years later, at a family reunion, dozens of people milled about my grandfather, mostly speaking over him, because he couldn’t hear anything amid all the noise. He smiled and nodded a lot.
I took him away from the crowd for a walk, where we could converse. I teased him about being a mere artifact on display.
He laughed.
“I can’t hear much, but I can feel a lot,” he said. “That’s what’s important.”
Now I understand.
