Day Brought Back My Night

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1989, Day Brought Back My Night explores the lives of people who have lost sight in late life as a result of age-related visual disorders. As life-expectancy in western society has increased, the number of people who fall into this group has grown, yet little had been written on this plight. This major study filled the gap in the literature, and will still be of great value to practitioners, scholars, and students in the fields of social gerontology, medicine, social work, and nursing. Stephen Ainlay surveys the various etiologies of age-related visual disorders and establishes the medical framework of the problem. His primary concern, however, is to understand people’s experience of vision loss, and he makes use of extensive interview data to establish the ways in which people come to terms with their own aging. The stories told here reflect people’s responses to a changing body as well as shifting relationships with friends, family members, medical practitioners, and service providers. They reveal hopes and fears, lost priorities, and new initiatives, relationships that recede and relationships that are newly established. Above all, they comment on the drama that is involved in people’s struggle to find continuity in their lives. In this way, the book is as much an exploration into the problem of identity as it is a study of sensory loss in later life.