I met several women in my lifetime. Due to a variety of reasons, associated with trucking it was clear that a relationship was possible should I stay home and pursue it. However I was a trucker and gone.
Fast forward many years, I met wife through happenstance. Dowdy in Batesville had dispatched me on a hot load to California in one of the frozen trailers and chop chop get going yer late already. 4 days to do it. I pulled into a place to grab food and wolf it down on the road. There she was and asked if I knew sign langauge. Yes I did. Can I learn? Well, her reasons were valid as a hearing person who was part of the church she was with that had some deaf that had no sign language services. They sit in a pew quietly until the service is over and went home routinely. They gained nothing.
With that said we married eventually. I was now a home owner with land and so on and her. Two becomes one. A team but more than that. So I was already sick then and stayed home to deal with the doctors to find out the extent of my damages. It was extensive and in some cases degenerative. However that was nothing compared to the cancer that showed up some years later. By then wife was with me for a year on the road in trucking and we were a team. She did some things and I did the rest.
She got used to the closed captioning and so on. Then adapted to it for quiet. The commercials in the TV used to blare. But now we just volume off and follow the captions or subtitles in videos. It took quite some time before she learned the extent of the history with me. And vice versa. Sometimes there was very bad conflict. One example was the Deaf Church in North Little Rock. She went there when I was on the east coast burying a relative in Arlington. That sunday the Pastor chose to sermon a message stating that the deaf should stand on their two feet and not take government SSI, SSDI, Social Security or any payments for simply being deaf. The pastor herself was all hearing and she made a grave error in reopening a very old and structural defect among deaf in school, some of whom took in hundreds of dollars a month in childhood for a variety of disabilites. The Hearing (Including my parents) would fight against that. SO it did a great deal of damage to those of us who were deaf. I thought the issue was dead and buried these last 30 years at that point in my lifetime.
Anyway, wife came home very angry and demanded to know what the issue was. That took a month of explaining to her the basic conflicts among the deaf in the deaf schools among those who took SSI or SSDI but some did not. Usually because their hearing parents deliberately failed to inform the deaf student that he or she can go to SSA and get this money. But they find out about it from the staff, some of whom were hearing and preached against it and others preached for it.
Just one example. That alone almost destroyed our marriage. Never mind the cancer. The Pastor didnt know any better, she was young in adult hood. Reopening old wounds from a hearing perspective.
We are divorced for a variety of good reasons and in fact our relationship is better for it. We both are dealing with medical stuff and we cannot depend on tomorrow. We both are free to meet others and who knows. But you know what? once is quite enough thank you. We have met others since then.
Do I hang on to her? No. At the same time we are a sunshine to one another when something comes up that one of us is good at. So everything that passed all these years are water under the bridge. I'll die a trucker. We recently went to the Petro in Little Rock for a meal last week and when I set foot on the property with the big rigs coming and going she could see me slip into trucker mode. Two different people in me. But she also drove for a while and understood me so thats not a problem. Birds of a feather fly together.
It was a good day however shaded with a problem when one of the staff who used a hearing aid to function in the resturant was overworked a bit much trying to keep up with 3 people asking her to do this, that and other etc in a noisy building (Roaring air conditoner vent directly in the ceiling) she developed chest pains. Our Medical and Fire responded in a timely manner but we dont know if she made it or not. She did not know sign language. However the hearing staff understood that we or I am rather are a trucker and they served us good food and good service. We tipped all of them well, including hearing aid lady who was being looked after. I think the Staff in that workplace needs to cool it in asking one person to do everything that they dont have time to do. You cannot do everything. Thats why you get sick or possibly dead. Its not worth it.
Once in a while I think about the very few women I have met and left for trucking work and wondered how they have done in life. I have had recieved some snippets through friends (And vice versa) on some of them and some have passed on with each passing year. I strike more friends off my address book as deceased. I just put three crosses in three just the last 6 months. One shoveled snow and dropped dead. Another was killed by cancer, ate her right up. A third was struck down by cancer while 25 and barely out of our school. And so on. Both deaf and hearing.
We have one life to live and if you are able to live it with someone with you then thats great. If not? Well that can be good too. However we as people are built to live, love and raise families where possible in all of our lifetimes. And to take the bad with the good along the way.
Deaf and hearing is something that is worked out through talking and teaching and a lot of it. However there are some issues that will not go away or be left alone and sometimes the hearings do a great deal of damage and that is from not knowing what passed 40 years or so ago. That is pretty much historical interest now. IF one cared to examine that.
One last point.
Columbia Campus when Opened in 1973 for the first 65 deaf, myself included. Featured a seperate wing for at least 50 (I forget the exact count too many years have passed) students who were not only deaf but medically disabled in a variety of horrible ways. They usually each have a nurse or caregiver with them 24/7 every day, wear protective gear and work with rules akin to what we called trainables or mentally retardation rules in those days. Such as Boys do not touch Girls and so on for obvious reasons. They lived fairly well and was taught what they could be taught by the State who was responsible for their education, such as it is. The hope was they would thrive and like forrest gump in the movie break off the braces and run with the big kids in the normal side of the campus.
Not all of them did. AND none of them had a life that I have been fortunate to have. Essentially no freedom, sheltered and shut away from society where necessary living on very little to no money, unable to decide for themselves what they want to do for a living and raise a family etc. No freedom basically.
They called it "Least Restrictive Environment"
The hearing have their own issues but nothing close to what we have had to deal with on our side of the society growing up.
