My road-The darkness

The lightning had stopped and the rain had turned to sleet.  It was the darkest part of the night.  The wind blew it against the windows through the burglar bars and it made a tapping noise.  The stranger had his head down on his arms.  He had mumbled for a while and then become silent as if sleeping.  We wondered if the alcohol and emotion of the story had worn him down and left him this peace, but he slowly lifted his head and his blood shot eyes shown in the light of a candle that had been placed on table so that the candle flame danced against within his eyes, the yell flame rimmed in veins of red.
The stranger continued as if he had never paused.

I remembered the days when I was my happiest.  I had nothing but a 20 year old motorcycle and my wits and a dollar which I vowed never to spend which I had received somewhat randomly and which bore the legend in red: “keep me and never go broke”.  I wondered with all the millions that I had and I had lost where that dollar was now, where that poor broke, invincible and happy risk everything person had gone to.
Around this time I went blind.  It was only a temporary thing, both retinas detached as a result of a sudden trauma.  My wife breaking a board against my head.
This is a notable event and one which I'm not particularly proud of but one which was critical to my redemption.
Like everything else that happened to me, it did not happen quickly.  After the event, I had some time when I saw what appeared to be a flurry of black snow which I could see through much as you'd see through a storm. The cause of this strange event said not to worry about it, but it became hard to ignore.
Once it was reported properly to an eye doctor, there followed some incompetent surgeries which ultimately left me able to see again, but absent the sharpness of youth, I could no longer read comfortably, nor see well in the distance.
It seemed at this point in time with everything collapsing around me that even my health had decided to abandon me.  In fact, I had largely abandoned it.  I was, you see, despite the wretched figure you see before you, quite the athlete in my younger days.  Several years of worry, a misguided or well guided blow to the head and the general passage of time had conspired to take away much of what I had before.
But it also seemed like as the outer vision was fading, and inner vision was getting clearer.  I was not happy. But quite suddenly, I was not unhappy either.  The idea that I would die, however, no longer frightened me.  In fact I welcomed it.  I read perhaps the first few lines of the book on "why was I here" but just the question seemed enough for me.  Was I really here just to worry away the last years of my life?  I wasn't always depressed.  I was not talking to the girl, at least not very often.  Her newest love seemed happy and her happiness was unbearable to me.  But I began to feel a certain contentment in the impending doom of all things I found important and in their absence, there was not so much a void to swallow me as a void which seemed to beckon me to fill it.
What was important to me, why was I here?