Not only being a donor yourself is important but educating our children about the importance of being a donor is an equal priority. If we don’t communicate to them the importance and how many lives it can save, we could be a few generations away from an extinct concept of life if we don’t do our part to make the future better for our children.
This is a stance that we have always taken, but never really stopped to think about as a primary objective of the Alabama Eye Bank. We are in the “sight restoring” business but we don’t want to make it sound so cold and business-like that we lose focus on what else are we restoring to each person’s life once they can see.
Try and walk around your house with your eyes shut and no cheating. Seriously, try and make it from one side of your house to the other without sight. Try and make a sandwich. Try to brush your teeth and fix your hair in the morning. Try and take out the garbage to the street corner. What if you have children…try and help them with their homework, you can’t see their smiles, you can’t grill out for their birthdays, you can’t see their smiles light up as they try and pull off the coveted “perfect cannonball” into the pool or the tears from their first heart-break.
The point that I’m hoping to make here is your hope for an emotionally fulfilled life is diminished daily with a constant string of disappointment & regret. I’m not trying to be all dark and doomsday here because I KNOW there are countless numbers of people who live VERY fulfilling lives that are blind. What I’m trying to paint here is a very HONEST perspective for those of us who CAN SEE, of what ONE DAY in the life of someone that CAN NOT is like. Instead of seeing their daughter draped in beauty or their son standing proud and hopeful of a new future at the alter…they are left with darkness and the sounds of the wedding march ringing in their ears to the rhythm of their hope being chipped away at.
These thoughts, however depressing and somber they may be, are a VERY realistic perspective that the families we interact with daily are experiencing and feeling. By visiting our DONATION webpage and registering to be an eye-donor and by your financial contributions, you are helping the Alabama Eye Bank restore hope to a man, a woman, a father or a mother by enhancing their quality of life to enjoy the small pleasures of getting to gaze upon the ones they love and experience memories of smiles gleaming in color and love wrapped in the warm glow of a fire.
