Some see better than others

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/07/2015 (3980 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the eyes that couldn’t see me I remember most.

But I also remember a generous heart.

That heart stopped beating on June 1, when Amber Armette died following an illness. She was 34.

I met Amber in December 2009, during one of my first Pennies from Heaven campaigns after the late Free Press columnist, Lindor Reynolds, decided to pass the wings on to me.

Amber was 29 when I walked into the bungalow she shared with her parents to meet and interview her.

Her mother, Wendy, had called me to say that because her daughter knew that Pennies helped our city’s hungry, she started saving the coins for a year, even cajoling family members to contribute and help out.

I quickly learned Amber, who could only see shadows, wasn’t always deemed blind. She lost most of her sight when she was only 19 months old and needed radiation after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. The radiation not only left her with greatly diminished sight, but also some cognitive issues.

Her mother told me Amber went through elementary and high schools and had been working with other adults with special needs in the community when she had a stroke the August before I met her.

For the rest of her life, Amber needed a wheelchair to get around.

But while Amber also needed a feeding tube after the stroke and through the years to come, a few months later she surprised doctors by being able to swallow food the consistency of pudding. Amber was never able to eat independently, but she was able to enjoy the taste and smell of certain foods.

Through it all, family members said Amber never complained. Not about her loss of sight. Not about her stroke. Not about her mobility. Not about her life.

And the stroke didn’t stop her from embracing life. She played cards. She was a Blue Bombers fan. She went to her brother’s football games. And she would sing every word if a Nickelback song came on the radio.

Amber figured, quite rightly, that as a person who knew the value of food and what it meant when she had lost the ability to eat most of it, she was qualified to help the hungry. Pennies, she reasoned, would be the vehicle because they were pretty easy to collect. She ended up collecting several large bottles filled with coins.

Through the years, I received many calls from Wendy. We’d have the kind of chats that only parents of children with special needs can have with each other. Complete strangers are able to bond through the challenges of our children.

But over time those conversations became further apart until I hadn’t heard from her for a few years.

Then, this week, came the news that Amber had died last month after falling into a coma after sustaining irreversible brain damage.

The news actually came to me on what would have been Amber’s 35th birthday.

The Pennies column I wrote about Amber started with “Some people can’t see the magic in the holiday season. Others can’t see, but do see the magic.”

Maybe that’s the best way to remember Amber. And maybe it’s the way we all should treat both the holiday season and life in general.

Because, while Amber couldn’t see like us, when it comes down to it, she really could see better than us.

Rest in peace Amber.

 

Kevin Rollason is an award-winning Free Press reporter and the father of Mary Rollason-MacAulay.

Kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca