Saturday, June 12, 2004

Ray Charles

By the time I was seven, I was completely blind. That's when I went to St. Augustine's school for the blind.Strangely enough, losing my sight wasn't quite as bad as you'd think, because my mom conditioned me for the day that I would be totally blind. When the doctors told her that I was gradually losing my sight, and that I wasn't going to get any better, she started helping me deal with it by showing me how to get around, how to find things. That made it a little bit easier to deal with. My mother was awful smart, even though she'd only gotten to fourth grade. She had knowledge all her own; knowledge of human nature, plus plenty of common sense.

I wasn't quite 15 when my mama died. That was the most devastating thing in my whole experience -- bar nothing, period. It happened while I was away at school, and they didn't want to tell me about it. They just called me in to the principal's office and said that I needed to go home right away. When I got there I found out from Miss Mary Jane, a lady that helped my mom raise me and take care of me; she gave me the news. From that moment on, I was completely in another world. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep -- I was totally out of it. There's no way to describe how I actually felt. I was truly a lost child.

The big problem was I couldn't cry; I couldn't get the sorrow out of my system, and that made things worse. Now, there was an old lady in town we called Ma Beck. She was the kind of lady that --well, everybody in town used to say that if there was a heaven, she was certainly going to be there when she passed. Anyway, this elderly woman saw the trauma I was going through. So she took me aside one day and said, "Son, you know that I knew your mama. And I know how she tried to raise you. And I know she always taught you to carry on. I also know she told you she wanted you to know how to get around and be independent. Because she knew she wasn't always gonna be with you. Didn't she tell you that?"

I said, "Yes ma'am'" and started to tear up. And Ma Beck kept after me. "Well, then, you also know that your mamma didn't want you going around just doing nothing and feeling sorry for yourself, 'cause that's not the way she brought you up. Isn't that right?" I said, "Yes, ma'am," and more tears came out. Now this elderly lady, she knew everything about me, including my sorrow over my brother's death. She made me realize that it wasn't my fault, and told me that I couldn't go through life blaming myself.

That episode with Ma Beck shook me out of my depression. It really started me on my way. After that I told myself that I must do what my mom would have expected me to do. And so the two greatest tragedies in my life -- losing my brother and then my mom -- were, strangely enough, extraordinarily positive for me. What I've accomplished since then, really, grows out of my coming to terms with those events.

http://www.raycharles.com/autobio.htm

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