Cathedral - Raymond Carver

This story is about a blind man named Robert coming to visit an old lady friend of his.  The lady friend happens to be the wife of the gentleman telling the story from his point of view.  I find it rather touching and emotional.  At first the man telling the story has very little interest in the wife’s blind friend.  He makes this obvious to readers when he says he doesn’t really care about some of the things his wife is telling him from their past together.  They had been sending each other tapes by mail; letters of course were out of the questions because the bling man could not read them.  They were everyday conversations, nothing too entertaining…  but of importance because the lady and the blind man were close friends. 

The second half of the story takes place at the woman’s house when Robert comes to visit after his wife died not too long before.  What is touching is not what they talk about at dinner, nor the mention of them smoking weed together (something the blind man had not experienced before.) it is what the man and Robert do when the wife falls asleep.

They draw a cathedral together, hand in hand, so the blind man can understand what one looks like.  Two people that do not know each other at all, have this moment when they almost become one.  Robert tells the husband to close his eyes and he keeps them closed after he finishes drawing.  The whole story seems pointless until they get to this point in the end.