For the last few years, I have joked that I cannot see to read, cannot recognized even close friends, have a hard time watching television, but thank God I can still drive my car. I am looking for a white cane that will fit on the front bumper so I can tap my way along the turnpikes. The joking was easy when I could still see. It isn't funny anymore. 

Raising perfect children is a snap until you are a parent. Making the decision to stop driving is easy until it is time to do so. I have boasted that my kids would not have to fight me for the car keys. I was not going to be the problem for them that I have helped people face with their parents so often I have come to believe it is a right of passage. No sir, I will know when and will stop on my own. That was then. This is now.

I have macular degeneration. Mostly in the right eye but the left one is doing its best to follow suite. So far I can see the traffic in front and around me. I cannot read road signs because one bad eye makes the mind have to decide which eye to look with and by the time that decision is made, I am a mile down the road. We still drive long distances to present the seminars my company offers. We have driven to Albany NY, Las Vegas NV, Chicago IL, already this year and still have Vancouver BC and Boston yet to cover. I can function only because my wife sits in the front seat and between us we have one set of eyes and almost a brain. We have been able to function without any close calls that we know of. We may have caused wrecks we never saw, but so far we are unscratched. So I have a pretty good argument for continuing to drive. It is an argument I need to loose. 

If I am honest I have to admit that my depth perception is far from adequate. I am either too far back behind the cars in front of me and still hitting my brakes, or I am barely getting stopped before rear ending some fool who thinks he should stop for traffic before making a left turn. If I am honest I have to admit that when I am alone in the car I am pulling out into traffic hoping I have not missed seeing an oncoming car. Now I wish I had not done so much boasting about giving up without a fight. I am getting some test run in the next two months and if there is no hope for improvement, my driving days are over.

Its not just the car or the driving, it is the loss of independence that makes this decision so hard for us old folks. To have to depend on and burden someone else for any travel needed or just desired is an extremely hard thing to accept. We’re not just fighting for the right to drive, we are fighting for our freedom.

I do hope they will allow me to keep a car. I don't have to have the fancy thing I am now trying to pay for, but I want a car of some kind even if I can't drive it. Nothing gives a sense of independence like a set of wheels. My mother had a car at my insistence until she died. I prayed every night that she would not drive it and made her promise not to do so, but I wanted her to have the feeling of independence only a car can give. If she had not kept her promise, I would have fixed the car so it would not start, but I wanted one there at her disposal. I think she slipped around and drove it up and down the back streets behind her care center but, other than that, she kept her promise. One day her brother drove her to our house in her car. She told me about eight times that they had made the trip in her car. She had him fill it with gas when they got back to her home. 

So, as it looks right now, sometime this year I will give up driving. I am not afraid of hurting myself, but it would kill me to cause an accident that injured or killed someone else. I hate the thought of not driving, but I hate the thought of some child laying in the street a whole lot more. 

Now don't tell my kids, but I have my eye on a scooter. I know the back streets and a wreck with a scooter is going to hurt me a lot more than anyone else. I will wear a helmet.

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