For the past month or so, I am realizing that I cannot remember hearing. I keep recalling memories from further back than ten months (when I lost my hearing), and they are different. I remember them as a deaf person, and then I am confused as I realize they happened before I went deaf. I can’t remember the voices of the people I was with, and I can’t remember listening to what they were saying. It’s like the memory has been altered, and now I remember sitting in silence. Yet, somehow I knew what was being discussed in each memory, but have no recollection of how I knew. That, I suppose, is the weirdest part. It’s sort of like a dream.

I’m just hoping that the memory of my family’s and friend’s voices is still lodged somewhere in the recesses of my brain, so that once my cochlear implant is turned on, I will able to hear them and recognize them again, just as it was before. It’s scary, because it’s getting harder and harder to remember as time goes on. I pray for God to give me dreams while I sleep, dreams in which I can hear them again. It hasn’t really happened yet, but I will be thankful when it does. I do have dreams where I can hear, but the people are usually acquaintances or people I knew from long ago.

The last dream I remember having was strange. I was home alone, and I opened a door to a room and in it were three cats. Two were cats we once had, Pele and Buster Brown, and the third was a white cat I had never seen before. I panicked a little because they had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. So I managed to remove the white cat from the house, and locked Pele and Buster back in the room. As I scurried to figure out what to do, I picked up the phone to call my friend, Sarah, but before she could answer I woke up from the dream. Only I was still sleeping. So it was a dream within a dream. And no human voices. I don’t even think I heard the cats’ meow. Very strange.

The last good memory I have from just before I went deaf is when we all went up to Marquette for the Independence Day holiday. That was such a great time with the kids. I remember all the places we went, and all the fun times we had up there, but I can’t for the life of me remember it with their voices and laughter. When I first lost my hearing, I had a lot of nightmares, and many of them involved our time up in Marquette. That was disheartening, because it was one of my most treasured memories at the time. I think that was one of the ways the devil was attacking me, and I would wake up each time with such fear and panic.

Thankfully, God took hold of those dreams and is protecting me now. God is so good. All the time.