A Good Day

My husband, Bill, suffers from industrial deafness. This condition has crept on insidiously for the past ten years and is particularly hard as he was a professional musician for more than 30 years. I only realised how difficult this was for him when we went to a performance of The Messiah. I noticed he was restless, and asked him if he was enjoying the music. He shook his head. “It sounds like a cacophony.”

     Advanced hearing aids, headphones, and a wonderful phone that prints out the text of a caller assist with daily life, but music has remained elusive. I have learned to keep the radio low because the distortion annoys him. So, today, as I am listening to the ABC 100 best music of love, passion, and heartbreak, we sat down to lunch and I asked Bill if he wanted me to turn down the sound. He seemed strangely quiet. Perhaps he hadn’t heard what I said. A gorgeous sonorous cello was filling the room with sound.

     “I can hear the timbre of the cello.”

I remembered that a few days ago he had taken his aids out to the shed to ‘modify’ them. Oh Oh, I’d thought. But he came back a while later to show me something he’d done to the ear mould ventilation, and fortunately he seemed cheerful. Surely any improvement at all would be good news. But could he really hear music again? It seems so. He commented on the vibrato.

     For any musician to lose his hearing is a cruel blow. Bill is also a piano tuner and music teacher. His livelihood has been affected and who can say whether this magical return of music is passing or permanent. Already emotional after many hours of gut-wrenching music, I felt tears on my cheeks. I have to say, for both of us, it has been a good day.