The connection was iffy. Sound came and went. The damaged hearing aid worked for the memorial concert after I toggled the battery case a bit, like I mentioned, it worked through the hours of the cousins gathering afterwards (with just a few moments where it randomly cut out and back on again a few times), and I simply left it on all that night, afraid to risk opening it again, after getting assurance from Marian that it wasn’t feeding back. I put it on in the morning thinking it should be okay that day too but so much for that, it was dead.
But by then it was just my folks, my brother, my sister, her friend, my son, my niece and her fiance… So I guess quite a few people actually but where it was easy to say, talk to my left side.
I kept the right one in, though, even if as custom-but-dead electronics it plugged up that ear a bit because at $4444 *each* (and that was at a discount from $7k) you just don’t lose those, y’know?
I opened the battery cases again on the plane home to turn them off, glad there was nobody in the middle seat this time, and after we landed I turned the left aid back on.
It went through the exasperating little overly-long tune it plays inside one’s head to let me know it was ready to go. (I would love to someday ask Oticon, hey, whose idea was that? Just–why? Why not make that part reprogrammable?)
Closed the other one, wishing if only, since I was going to need to call Richard to come out of park’n’call shortly. But I knew I could make the bluetooth work with just the one.
–When–hey, I know that song–it played! Look at that! Whyever, I’m happy, and we were able to talk all the way home on the noisy freeways, catching up after I’d spent three days with So. Much. LIFE! crammed into them. Small/great blessings.
And then this morning it was dead again. And intermittent again.
Yesterday, after seeing Dad’s museum and taking Bryan to the airport, Marian had said, call your audiologist right now and I looked at the clock and realized it was still before 5:00 California time. Hey. So I did.
They got me in this afternoon. They replaced the battery door (now I know the right way to describe it) under warranty. Done. And that was clearly all it needed.
And now I can go back to talking about things like handing cousin Bruce in person the cashmere/silk cowl for his wife Paige in handdyed turquoise, a color I knew she loves, as I asked how her treatments were coming. Still in radiation. He was so thrilled, and he told me how much she loves her shawl I’d already sent.
I was just grateful there was something I could do to be with them where they were in any way.
And how another cousin said she was moving to England and said it with so much embarrassment mixed with such fervent hope, something about how she was going to be needing a scarf and hat in seven months when they go, that I laughed and told her, “Of course. What color?”
“Surprise me.”
As I grinned but thought of my friend Constance’s line that color is everything, wondering just how adventurous I should be, she added, motioning at my blouse, “My coat is that shade of purple.”
Having twenty-three cousins on that side plus aunts and uncles and spouses, I almost told her, Just don’t let the word get out, okay?