Son’s Death Gives Sight to Blind Mother : Medicine: Transplanted cornea from 15-year-old boy restores her vision. ‘I’ll always be your eyes,’ he had promised.

Christopher Colin promised his blind mother he would always be her eyes. Friday, four days after he died in a traffic accident, she regained her sight through her son’s transplanted cornea.

Doctors removed the bandages from her right eye and, for the first time in more than 12 years, Sally Colin could gaze on her two surviving children.

“It was unbelievable! My children, gosh they’ve grown. They’re so big, you know,” she said after returning home from the hospital.

Colin, 51, received her son’s cornea Thursday.

“He kept his word,” Colin said before the operation. “He promised, ‘Mama, I’ll never leave you and I’ll always be your eyes.’ ”

Relatives and friends said Christopher protected his reclusive mother from the world outside their home. A degenerative eye disease, keratoconus, had left her blind since 1982.

The 15-year-old earned $20 a week stocking soda pop and ice at a convenience store to supplement his mother’s public assistance checks. He helped care for his younger brother and sister.

On nights when his mother was frightened or depressed, he would sit up and hold her hand, sometimes until dawn, but refused to miss school the next day.

“He was her right-hand man,” said Cathy Wiggins, a friend who has lived with the family for years and helped take care of Colin. “She’s going to be real lost without him.”

Christopher was struck by a car last Sunday a block from his home. He suffered severe head injuries and was declared brain-dead Monday. His mother agreed to donate his organs.

His heart, liver, both kidneys and both lungs went to five other people around the country. One cornea was implanted in the eye of a 32-year-old man. The other went to his mother.

“He was a nice guy,” said Christopher’s 13-year-old brother, Nic. “He wouldn’t let anyone pick on the family. He was more or less the man of the house.”