You have your mother's eyes!

Usually when someone tells me that I look like another family member, I smile politely. I'm usually glad for the comparisions to loved ones that make me "me".

But when a former neighbor said I have my mother's eyes--meant as a compliment--I got a little sick to my stomach.

I don't want her eyes, not the eyes I remember. Her eyes as I remember them were empty. Those were the eyes that convinced my sister and I that our brother has that dreaded gene on Chromosome 4. We told each other "his eyes are like mom's were." Empty, as if the soul was gone.

It's one of the nasty things about Huntington's disease. The empty eyes. I want my eyes to be full of life, full of light, full of sparkle. Like I hope hers were before.

She's been gone for 10 years, I've lived 10 years without a mother. She was showing earlier symptoms by my age. Signs that were obvious after the fact, but subtle and easy to miss if you didn't know what to look for. We didn't know what to look for.

My sister is five years older, and shows no signs of the disease. I've breathed a sigh of relief for her.

Some days, I'm tempted to sigh in relief for me too--but then I remember how easy those early signs were to miss. So I won't exhale quite yet. But the sparkle is still in my eyes.