Highs and Lows

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud, not Negative Nancy.

After receiving a couple of “Hang In There” cards in the mail, a few  inspirational e-mails (including a special one from an old friend from college days with a great quote from LaoTzu “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”) and a few “You okay?”  long distance phone calls, I decided to go back and read what the hell it was I wrote in my last few blog posts, something I hardly ever do.

Usually I just go into the blog site once a week on my lunch hour, write whatever I’ve been feeling lately, hope there are no typos, and hit send, and that’s it. Never look back.  But after the responses I’ve received lately, I felt I better do some reading.

I have to admit the last two posts were a bit melancholy.  The character Debbie Downer from Saturday Night came to mind. (I always call that show Saturday Night because that was the original title of the live show I fell in love with when it first aired during my college days. Once it became so popular in the late ‘70s and TV Guide, along with most people who liked the show, started calling it Saturday Night Live, the new title stuck. I preferred the first two years, with Belushi and Chase, although Bill Murray was a great replacement of Chevy).

So, after reading the past two blogs I decided it was time for me to get off of the Pity Potty and put on my Big Boy Pants. It is time to stop feeling sorry for myself.

Sure, Terry and I were dealt a pretty shitty hand (can ‘pretty’ and ‘shitty’ be used in the same sentence?), when she was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease back in the spring.

I had to look myself in the mirror and say, as Cher said to Nicholas Cage in the movie Moonstruck, after her future brother-in-law said he was in love with her: “SNAP OUT OF IT!!”

I admit we have had a very different, up and down outlook on life since Terry and I were informed of her condition.

This past spring was probably the worst ever, after being informed that my wife had a deadly disease that had no cure. But then the summer came, and it ranked up there with the best summers we’ve ever had.

And we’ve had some great summers.

One of our first summers together, when we were dating, we both worked at a college summer camp for kids, Terry as a counselor for the nine-year olds and I was the Head Counselor (prime example of inmates running the asylum) and I also had the oldest kids, the 13 year olds. (speaking of Bill Murray, that was the summer the movie Meatballs came out and many of the other counselors came back from seeing that movie telling me “Hey, we just saw a movie about you.”). That was truly a great summer.

And Terry and I just had another great summer, and in part, the great summer we just had was because of the diagnosis. We began to seize the day. I think the phrase is “Crap a Dime.” (Or is it “Carpe Diem?” I never was good at Latin, which kept me out of the altar boys. Looking back, that might have been a good thing. I never had my hair parted in the middle by the priests who are now defrocked.)

Let’s get back to my original thought, before I get excommunicated.

Since we learned of Terry’s condition it has been an up and down ride, “twistin’ like an old beach roller coaster” as Luke Bryan would say. 

We have great days, having learned to accept our fate and try to enjoy today. Live for the present. But we also have lousy days, when Terry and I realize she can no longer do something she has done with ease for 20 years. But we need to concentrate on the good days. That is what I need to remember.  I’m afraid I was not remembering that the last few weeks. I need to accentuate the positive.

What was it that Johnny Mercer said back in the 1940s? 

“You’ve got to accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative.

Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum

Bring gloom down to the minimum

Have faith or pandemonium’s

Liable to walk upon the scene.”

Pandemonium? Wasn’t that the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost?  I’m afraid Terry and I may be passing through that place before all of this is over.

Wait, wait! Don’t be negative, Bud. I think Johnny Mercer meant pandemonium to mean chaos. (and the word chaos, spelled KAOS, always reminds me of Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and that brings a smile to my face.)

But if Mercer did mean Hell, well maybe we’ll just keep on going. There is a country song that states:

“If you’re going through hell keep on going

Don’t slow down, if you’re scared don’t show it

You might get out before the devil even knows you’re there.”

So that is my new philosophy. Keep on going. Or as the blues/rock band Hot Tuna (some of the members of Jefferson Airplane) sang in the early 1970s; “Keep on Truckin.”  Maybe I’ll get a tattoo of that little guy with the big feet and one leg stretched out in front of him, strutting confidently across various landscapes, to remind me to keep going forward in a positive manner.

Positive thinking is a mental and emotional attitude that focuses on the bright side of life and expects positive results.  It is like what Monty Python used to sing; “Always look on the bright side of life.”

I believe there is power in positive thinking. It can produce more energy, more initiative and more happiness. Happy thoughts attract happy people.  A positive attitude makes it easier to avoid worries and negative thinking. When you are optimistic you expect the best to happen. It can make you feel inspired. It can give you the strength not to give up. It can bring more happiness into your life. Being happy is a choice. You can choose to be optimistic.  It can give you strength, like being loved deeply by someone. It can give you courage, the way loving someone deeply does. (and I don’t even practice Taoism)

So from now on, no more Negative Nancy, no more Debbie Downer. When life hands me lemons, I’m making Honey Bourbon Lemonade, Tequila-Thyme Lemonade, Electric Lemonade, Boston Rum Lemonade, maybe Tarragon Lemonade.

So as Eric Idle of Monty Python sang:

“Life’s a piece of shit

When you look at it

Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it true.

You’ll see it’s all a show

Keep ‘em laughing as you go

Just remember that the last laugh is on you,

And always look on the bright side of life…

Always look on the right side of life…

Until next time, keep on truckin’, stay positive, and look on the bright side. I will try to do the same.

Bud