Seasons Change

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and yesterday was the first official day of fall. I hate fall.

The Autumnal Equinox, I believe it is called, when there are 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Equinox means when night and day are equal. It is the hallway point between when the sun rises at its northern most point along the horizon in June (the longest day of the year) and the southernmost point in December (the shortest day of the year).

Some people I know absolutely love the fall, with the beautiful foliage, the cool, crisp air, the aroma of spiced pumpkin lattes waffling from the local Starbucks.

Forgive me if I do not celebrate the harvest season.

Autumn in poetry, as well as in my own life, has often been associated with melancholy. As Frank Sinatra (and my father) used to sing, “It’s a long, long time from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.” I’ve always hated it when days grow shorter, at least as far as the sunlight goes.  

Many people turn inward, both mentally and physically, in the fall.

When I was a kid fall meant back to school. Ugh! I’ve never gotten over that, except for my four years in college. I loved going back to school when I was in college. But then I had good reason.  I went to college in fun-in-the-sun Miami, so for me it was just an extended summer.

Summer has always been my favorite season, by far. Growing up a baseball player, I was truly one of the boys of summer. I’ve never out-grown that.

And this past summer was like no other. To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times… It was the season of Light; it was the season of Darkness.”

My wife Terry and I just enjoyed one of the best summers we’ve ever had. We did more things, we visited more relatives, we went on more trips, and we spent more time together, than any other summer in the 36 years we’ve known each other.

Unfortunately, the reason we made the absolute most out of this past summer, the reason we squeezed every ounce of enjoyment out of this past summer, was because of Terry’s diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

It has been a year now since we’ve known something was seriously wrong, and back on that dark day in the spring when her condition was finally confirmed, we made it a point of emphasis to make the very most out of every day, every week, every month of this summer. And we succeeded.  It was truly a great summer.

But now summer is over. And Terry’s mental health is beginning to fall.

Turn of the century French poet Paul Verlaine wrote the Autumn Song, which has strong, painful feelings of sorrow. “All choked and pale, when the hour chimes, I remember days of old and I cry.”

Unfortunately, Terry and I can relate all too well.

Well before Verlaine, English poet John Keats wrote To Autumn, which speaks of the lush abundance of fall (harvesting of fruits and gourds) but also has a strong sense of melancholic reflection, as winter approaches and everything is dying.

I am afraid Terry’s winter is coming soon, much too soon. And I feel it very well could be our own winter of discontent. But unlike the way Shakespeare used that phrase in Richard III, I do not mean the time of our unhappiness has passed.  Far from it.

About 100 years ago Nobel Prize winning poet W.B. Yeats wrote The Wild Swans at Coole, where the changing of the seasons represents the aging process. “Upon the brimming water among the stones are nine-and-fifty swans” is in the first stanza and the poem ends with a question “By what lake’s edge or pool delight men’s eyes when I awake some day to find they have flown away?”

Terry is five-and-fifty years old, which should certainly be too young for me to have to worry about waking up one day soon to find that the woman who delight’s my eyes has flown away.

But it is not too young. Not anymore.

Fall is supposed to represent the golden years of our lives. Our summer truly was pure gold, but I am not looking forward to the fall.  I am not looking forward to Terry’s fall.

In the poem by Yeats, the end of summer and the beginning of fall represents the heartache of living in a time when “all’s changed” in the 19 years since he first saw the swans at the lake.

My dear wife Terry is changing right before my eyes, especially in the last 19 months.

Anastacia, an American singer/song writer who has had more success outside of the United States, wrote in her song Seasons Change:

Happy turns to sad

Sometimes life gets bad

Things get rearranged

Nothing stays the same

It just never ends

Here we go again

One thing still remains

Seasons change.

I think I made a point in one of my previous blog posts that I hate change, always have.   But I also made a point in previous posts that I was going to be more positive in the future. Look on the Brightside of Life. The glass is half full.  

So now Terry and I plan on making a concerted effort to enjoy this autumn. Maybe we’ll go apple picking. We’ll buy a pumpkin or two for the front of the house.  I have been known to enjoy a good Oktoberfest in the past. I might even go to Starbucks and buy a spiced pumpkin latte. Or better yet go somewhere that serves hard apple cider.

This fall we’ll continue to enjoy taking walks. With fewer mosquitos we’ll be able to enjoy our walks in the woods more. The sound of crunching leaves underfoot is always a pleasant one.  Maybe I’ll take Terry to a football game. My old high school team plays within walking distance of our house.

This weekend I’m taking Terry to her childhood home in Rhode Island for a Walk to End Alzheimer’s.  Fall always seems to arrive a bit sooner in New England.  The air is cooler up there, and soon it will be at our house as well. When it comes to Terry’s mental health, however, I just hope the temperatures are the only things that gradually decrease this fall.

On the ride up to New England we’ll enjoy the foliage, which has already begun up there. Once there we will enjoy visiting with Terry’s family.  And on the way home, we will begin to enjoy our time together this fall.

So yesterday was the first day of fall. And as the old 1960s expression goes, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.”

I am afraid of what tomorrow will be. But we will try to make the most of it, with or without a spiced pumpkin latte.

Until next time, enjoy the foliage.

Bud