Photographer Lily Bertrand-Webb: A Letter On A Life-Changing Day
Having been diagnosed as profoundly deaf as a child, photographer LILY BERTRAND-WEBB underwent a four-hour operation to be fitted with a cochlear implant. Here, she writes a letter to her nine-year-old self about the day that would change her life, the bravery and perseverance she would discover within, and the power her deafness has given her to view the world differently
Dear Lily, aged nine,
Do you remember a time before you became deaf? Do you remember the moment when you lost your hearing for good? These are two of the questions you will wonder to yourself as you grow up. And ones you have to accept that you may never know the answers to.
But there is a life-changing event to come. It’s summer 1999 and you’re having your cochlear implant operation. You are excited and eager to “hear better”. Hearing aids have been failing you. Getting the cochlear implant, your parents say, will help you to hear your friends and family, to speak on the phone and keep playing the piano. The four-hour operation is daunting, but your fierce bravery will get you through it – and the six weeks of recovery. Your love for your friends and your FOMO mean that you go back to school a week after the operation. You will have six weeks of hearing nothing at all, yet you still go to classes, play with your friends, and take part on sports day. Nothing fazes you because that’s how you’ve always been. With the support from your tiger mummy and daddy, and your little baby sister, you never feel lonely. They will always be your rock.
But there are days when it feels like it’s going on for centuries. Weeks of no hearing mean that you are conscious you’re being too loud or too quiet and even get paranoid that everyone can hear you breathing loudly. You take comfort in exploring your home and playing outside and making daisy necklaces. You love watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with your godfather and reading The Famous Five books. Lipreading everyone all day every day, like reading a live novel, exhausts you, and you often look forward to taking disco naps after school.
The Switch On. The big day is highlighted in the family calendar. The day that you will finally hear after six weeks of silence. Six weeks of not hearing your own voice, no music, no nature. Will it work? Will it not work? Will it be painful? What will happen if it doesn’t work? Another operation? Hundreds of questions that can’t be expressed. How can a nine-year-old describe to hearing people what exactly it feels like to be deaf and to finally be given the chance to hear?
“That day is the first in a new chapter of your life. A miracle. A whole new world opened to you. The ride to come won’t be easy but boy, are you ready to go on another rollercoaster
”
Your parents sit in the doctor’s room, and you’re in a chair wired to a computer. It’s a windy day; you notice the white curtains blowing out from the window, and the carpet is royal blue just like your classroom. The doctor’s strawberry-blonde hair looks strikingly similar to your teacher’s. Observing the room, you realize that this is what you like doing. Because you can’t hear, you have to visually understand and learn people’s facial expressions and body language. You’ll soon be doing that through your camera lens.
“Ok, Lily. Are you ready? 3,2,1… Hello, Lily. Can you hear my voice? Can you hear your parents voices? Can you speak?”
A moment of deafening silence surrounds the room. Suddenly, sounds enter you like a lightning bolt. Your dad is bouncing around, banging on objects, excitedly shouting, perhaps a bit too loud. “Can you hear this, Lily? Can you hear the sound of my packet of crisps, Lily?” Turning the tap on, “Can you hear the water rushing out of the tap, Lily?” Yes, yes, yes you can hear! After a round of emotional tears and joyful commotion, you leave the hospital and become overwhelmed by London’s thunderous racket. Buses shrieking, motorbikes backfiring, car horns beeping, and a loud bubble of chatter. WOW, so this is what life sounds like. This is what you’ve been missing? Your parents rescue you, whisking you to the park nearby, to bathe in more comforting sounds. Birds singing, trees blowing, bees buzzing. After nine years, you can finally hear birds singing. And it is worth the wait.
That day is the first in a new chapter of your life. A miracle. A whole new world opened to you. The ride to come won’t be easy but boy, are you ready to go on another rollercoaster.
I’d be lying if I said the struggle ends there though. There will be a series of dark eras. You’ll feel left out at your friends’ sleepovers when they tell ghost stories in the dark and when they play Marco Polo in a swimming pool. You’ll miss out on making prank calls with your classmates. And friends will childishly laugh at you when you can’t pronounce America.
The teen years will not be so kind either. The cochlear implant comes with a Game Boy-lookalike box, strapped around your waist connected by an ugly wire to the processor behind your head. You disguise it by refusing to wear dresses and wearing your beloved Limp Bizkit hoodie and baggy jeans instead. There is a constant struggle of wearing your long, frizzy hair down to hide the processor. But at 16, the latest small design is cool and cute. You’ll start showing it off and proudly telling friends and strangers that this magical machine allows you to hear. The grungey era makes way for a new dawn of mini skirts and dresses and making up dance moves as you listen to Destiny’s Child.
Your perseverance will help as you go on to secondary school, to university, and eventually to become a professional photographer. You will realize your deafness has allowed you to look at the world differently. Photography will become a tool for you to communicate through. Your camera will become the key to access many worlds, to travel, and to meet people from all walks from life.
Shooting on film, your obsession with chasing natural light and capturing nature’s delights will enable you to grow as an artist. And 25 years after that momentous day, you will have found a way to visually portray your beautiful half-deaf and hearing world.
Love,
Lily, 35 years old