John my husband lost all his language after the stroke.
NT’s glasses and empathy
Written on 2nd Oct 2015 by Sylvia Lowery
I remember my father needing two lots of glasses. He was continually having to switch from one pair to another and we as children spent out lives looking for my dad’s glasses. As a child and younger person my views on this strange reading glasses phenomena were pretty unsympathetic. I mean it was amusing to see someone with glasses on their head asking if anyone had seen them. I knew that it only seemed to happen to people my dad’s age or older but really I just didn’t spend any time thinking about it. That was until recently when I found myself standing in shops trying to read the small print and feeling annoyed that my Poundland reading glasses are back at home. I have needed distance glasses since I was fifteen but only slightly. However lately I find myself unable to read a thing with my distance glasses on. I find the whole situation very vexing and inconvenient. I now feel rather ashamed at the way I laughed at my poor old dad. But it took until I was in this situation myself for me to no longer find it amusing.
Me and dad on my wedding day. My father was always needing to change glasses.
The question I wonder is what happened to my empathy? According the experts I’m don’t have autism and I’m supposed to know how it feels for someone else, I can apparently put myself in someone else’s shoes figuratively speaking. But I’m afraid it didn’t work on this occasion. No I only grasped the difficulty when it happened to me. This got me thinking. Maybe there are lots of trials others face that I have no idea about because it hasn’t happened to me. I don’t know what it’s like to be on the autistic spectrum. Yes I have a son with autism but is that just like observing my dads need to keep change his glasses. This made me think of a time when Alex was small.
An older lady we knew had recovered from a stroke, she had recently regained her language. She came up to me and she said something like (it was a long time ago) “it was so hard being unable to speak, I got really angry because I had things to say and I couldn’t and people didn’t know what I wanted. It must be so hard for Alex to struggle to talk.” I remember thinking it must have been hard for her and it must be hard for Alex. Five years ago in November my husband John had a stroke and lost all his language for a time. I once again lived with someone who couldn’t say what he was thinking.
Here is something I wrote back on the 17th December 2010 a few weeks after John had the stroke.
“John says he understands Alex so much better now since he has had the stroke, Alex has always found it harder to concentrate when there is more than one thing going on. John is also more understanding in other ways, on the way home from YPF I tried to get the car into the drive twice, but I had misjudged the position and had to give up and drive off. On the second occasion I muttered something about being stupid and John said,” It’s just because it went wrong the first time it gets harder because you have already got it wrong once, it’s like that with me when I try to talk.”
Before the stroke I don’t think John could understand this concept, so it has made him more understanding.”
However this article isn’t about John its about me and all of us. Do we really know what it is like to have autism or to lose our language. I suggest we don’t. We misunderstand those on the autism spectrum at least as much as they misunderstand us. I would even suggest that those with autism make far more adjustments to live in the world we want than we make to make the world a better place for them. Alex spends hours wanting to understand why certain things are done in a certain way and he likes to role play so that he can fit in. Maybe we can all start to use every day experiences like me needing reading glasses to remember we only know how we feel and we only know how something is if we experience it for ourselves.
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