We can only imagine life without seeing the ones we love.
Seeing things and visually appreciating our surroundings are things we usually take for granted. But not everyone can have the chance to see colors, to experience brightness, and to watch the people they love the most.
This is the reality for Gene Purdie who never saw the world the way we do.
Purdie was born with Stargardt’s disease.
The disease affects the sharpness of our eyes and manifests through our central vision. To give you an image of what they see, people afflicted with the disease have an intense blurry vision that they can only see the outline of things around them.
While vision loss can start in childhood in some cases, some people experience symptoms and visual degradation when they’re adults.
But this didn’t stop him from meeting the love of his life.
His wife Joy shared that when she was just starting to develop an interest in Gene, she waved to say “hi” but Gene just passed her by. It might’ve stung at first, but Joy didn’t give up.
The next time she saw him, she asked him what his “deal” was with all these “pretending not to see her”. It was then that Gene shared he was blind.
It was the beginning of their life together.
They eventually dated and got married. Then, they started a family. At this point, Gene tried his best to live with the disease as he trained himself to do things at home.
The couple admitted that Gene was actually good at cooking despite having to literally stick his nose down the pages of a cooking book just to read the ingredients.
Gene showed his love in profound ways despite not seeing his family.
Then one day, as Joy was watching TV, she saw a visual rig featured on Rachael Ray’s show. In the segment, eSight gave a young woman a chance to finally see her sister’s smile.
This wasn’t available back then and seeing it now gave Joy some hope that her husband can live a life where he can see their son.
She penned to Rachael Ray so they could have a chance to get on the show.
“Although I heard Rachael Ray say that they were going to help someone see, I still did not believe it because we’ve always been told ‘no’.” she said in the show, “I literally began shaking and crying for the next hour or more at the thought of my husband being able to see my face for the first time – to see our son for the first time.”
The next thing Gene knew, he was sitting in front of a live audience with Rachael Ray expressing how excited she was for the couple.
Gene saw Joy’s face for the very first time.
The only thing he could say as he held back his tears were the words, “Oh, she’s pretty.” At that moment, Joy knew that the glasses were working. And as Gene laid his eyes on his son, everyone in the studio couldn’t help but cry with him.
Rachael Ray gifted him the $15,000 visual rig, but he was not only gifted with the ability to see.
He was gifted a life where he could take snapshots of the most precious moments and see them forever.
Watch Gene’s adorable reaction in the video below.
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