Change

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I can’t remember if it was Mark Twain or Will Rogers who said “I’m all for progress, it is change I object to.”

Whoever it was who said that, I very much agree with him.

Like a lot of people, I have always resisted change. And for good reason. Most people genuinely believe that when we've been doing something a particular way for a long time, it must be a good way to do things. And the longer we've been doing it that way, the better it is.

Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Terry and I have been together for 35 years and our relationship has always gotten better with time. Now it is breaking. And we can’t fix it.

Change isn't simply about embracing something unknown, it's about giving up something old (good) for something new (not good).

I hate change!

Middle aged women often blame “the change” for their mood swings, hot flashes and their CRS (can’t remember shit). As a matter of fact, when Terry and I first realized something was wrong our family doctor told us it was just menopause. Or as Archie Bunker appropriately called it: “mental pause.”

Suzuki, not the motorcycle company but the Zen monk who made Zen Buddhism popular in the United States in the 1960s, said that “without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.”

It is change that is making me suffer, the change in my wife Terry, due to her Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. I wish her condition was transience (brief and short lived). As it is I am losing my composure more and more often.

Author John A. Simone once said “If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change.”  That’s my biggest fear. We are in a bad situation and the situation is changing. But it is not changing for the better. It is only going to get worse.

In the same breath, Simone also said, “If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change.”

What if you are in a great situation? That is what Terry and I had. And it changed.

Terry and I were only married for 15 months before we began having kids. We had two children the first 33 months we were married before we realized what was causing it.

For 30 years our identity was that of parents. We finally became empty nesters and began living the life of a happy couple just a few years ago, and it was terrific. We were taking trips and not having to worry about the kids. We were doing things on the spur of the moment, without having to check the kids’ schedules.

We were living the dream, until Terry’s diagnosis. Now it is a nightmare. And there is no waking up.

We are still a happy couple, although I have to admit Terry seems to be much happier than I am these days. Although everyday life is getting harder for her, she continues to be upbeat and happy. She laughs every day, while I seem to be crying in my beer more and more often.

Woodrow Wilson said “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” Alzheimer’s has made itself an enemy of mine, changing my wife. Changing my life.

One of Terry’s brothers teaches at a very prestigious boarding school in Concord, Mass. Concord is where the famous Walden’s Pond is. That is where Henry David Thoreau wrote “Things don’t change, we change.”

Terry is changing right before my eyes, and it is killing both of us.

Ellen Glasgow, a famous novelist who grew up wealthy in Virginia about 100 years ago, said “All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.”

Truer words were never spoken. The only growth in Terry’s change is those damn plaques and tangles in her brain. The only thing moving forward is the progression of her horrible disease.

Did I mention I hate change?

When I was a kid I idolized the ‘hippies’ of the 1960s who were a little bit older than I was. I was only 11 years old during the ‘Summer of Love’ and just 13 when Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in the Catskills hosted the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. 

But I did own a Nehru jacket.

Nehru was the prime minister of India in the 1950s and he was once quoted as saying “The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down.”

Terry and I were up, way up, enjoying life to the fullest. Our lives now are going the way of that old Nehru jacket. That damn wheel of change has gone and run over us.

Eleanor Roosevelt said “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

To some people that is very good advice. Once you find the courage to confront adversity it makes you stronger for next time.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I’m afraid the longest serving First Lady’s advice does not apply to me and Terry. We are facing fear all right. But we will not live through this horror.

The adversity we are facing is not going to merely make us stronger. It is going to kill us.

Through the first few months of this ordeal Terry and I have tried to accept our fate and find the positives in everyday life. We’ve tried to enjoy today and whatever happens tomorrow we will worry about tomorrow.

But sometimes it just gets to us.

Bob Dylan wrote a song called Things Have Changed. In it he says

Some things are too hot to touch

The human mind can only stand so much

You can’t win with a losin’ hand

I am afraid Terry and I have been dealt a pretty shitty hand, one we cannot win with. But we will keep on playing. What choice do we have?

Dylan also wrote more commonly known lyrics:

Come gather ‘round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you

Is worth savin’

Then you better start swimming

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin.

They are certainly a-changin’ for me and Terry. I hope that in my mind Terry will always be that cute, spunky little tennis player with the infectious smile.

One of the greatest authors of all time, Proust, who wrote In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past), said “Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.”

Until next time, don’t go changing

Bud

                                                           Marcel Proust