It was an Easter Sunday like no other. The Bear and I tootled down to the Cathedral in my home town, one of the ‘Parish Church Cathedrals’. As such, it is small – no high tower, no soaring pillars, no Victorian screens dividing nave and chancel (we can spot a good bit of Scottery a mile off – George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic Revival interventions are supremely distinctive. . . ), so the acoustics were pretty much perfect: nowhere for sound to disappear upwards, no vaulting for the sound to bounce off, nothing to cut the choir off from the congregation.
It was an uplifting service, and we needed it: that evening, my mobile rang just as my father and I arrived at the hospital. It was actually the ward sister asking us to hurry, for my mother was deteriorating. Not only did we have a conversation, but I also heard the relief in her voice, as I explained that we were literally on our way in.
We rushed in, and, just over an hour later, I heard my mother’s last breath. Amongst all the benefits of having a CI this was, perhaps, the least expected, but the most treasured. She had a good long life and never stopped hoping that somehow I would be able to hear again. That she lived long enough to see it happen is something I am grateful for.
Deaflinguist's Blog 
So sorry to learn of your loss, but as you say that fact that she was able to see you hearing again must have been a comfort for her in later life.
Thank you very much. And, of course, I got to hear her voice again, which, strange as it seems, I recognised straight away after over 30 years not hearing it at all, and having forgotten, actually, what it sounded like!
I’ve been amazed by the power of those childhood memories – not just my parents’ voices, but other things: listening to an album I remembered my parents liked, I recognised the tunes, and even remembered I didn’t like one particular tune very much, and still don’t; and that horrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I tried my Focus programme, which kicked me just as it did when I was 7 and made to listen with a loop at school. I hated the suppression of background noise then, and I still do. Obviously, that’s not for everybody – that just seems to be my personal “hearing style”, for want of a better phrase.
Mum pushed and fought for a diagnosis, and battled both the medical and educational systems: the headmaster of a mainstream school with a PHU who said that I would never even achieve O-Levels because “deaf children are basically uneducable”, a dinosaur even by the standards of 30+ years ago; a teacher of the deaf who blundered from one error to another in a “one size fits all” approach, causing me needless grief at school (though others were absolute stars, I should say); the dictatorial attitude of the local education authority, and the sheer rudeness of one particular “eminent” doctor, now long deceased, I believe. I shall tell that story one day: my blood boils to think of it now, and the flash of her blue eyes as she looked at the doctor was enough to show that a line had been irrevocably crossed as far as Mum was concerned.
Mum was a darling little person, and because of that, the professionals thought she was a pushover. How wrong they were, and I owe more to her and my father than to any of them. I guess I’ve inherited her healthy cynicism!
Yes, those memories of how things used to sound. I am using that to re-learn all sounds speech, music the lot! It is funny how the restoration of the stimulus has awakened memories as well with me.
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