Cross to Bear

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and like most people I have a cross to bear.

I have a heavy burden, heavy responsibility, a problem that I must cope with. A cross to bear.

Ever since my wife Terry was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, people have come up to me, written me or called me with their condolences. I have often responded to them by saying “We all have our crosses to bear.” 

And that’s true. We all have our problems.

The term “a cross to bear” obviously comes from the fact that Jesus had to carry the very cross he would eventually die on all the way up to the hill at Calvary which was miles away. The Stations of the Cross are based on it.

When I was little and I saw the INRI on the top of the crucifix I thought Jesus might have died IN Rhode Island, not knowing INRI meant Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum. (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews for those of you who didn’t take Latin).

I am reminded of that this Holy Week as Good Friday and Easter Sunday are approaching.

Everyone has a burden that they must cope with in their lives. Some burdens seem harsher than others. Dragging a tree for miles up a hill so people can nail you to it and then crucify you on it makes most problems we have seem not so bad, don’t you think?

There is a common belief, one that I used to support, that goes something like this:  If you formed a circle of people, and everyone making up the circle could take their worst problem and put it in the middle, and then go around the circle and everyone had to pick one problem to have, most people, seeing what others have to deal with, would take their own problem back.

I used to believe that. I’m not so sure anymore. If I put into the middle of the circle the fact that my wife, my best friend, my partner, has Alzheimer’s, I can’t imagine selecting that from the list of other problems when it was my turn to pick.

To do that I’d have to be put in a circle with a pretty down-on-their-luck crowd. With my luck Jesus Himself would be in that circle. 

No, I couldn’t take His problem.

And speaking of Good Friday and Easter approaching, so is Passover. That is someone else who would probably end up in my circle, someone who did not put blood on their door and lost their first born male to the Angel of Death.

No, I couldn’t take his problem.

There would probably even be a dog in that circle, a flea-bitten mutt that was blind in one eye, missing half an ear, had just three legs, was accidently neutered and had a torn-off tail. Goes by the name Lucky.

We’re getting closer to problems I would take over mine.

There would have to be someone in that circle I could switch with. I can’t imagine too many problems I would pass up for taking my own back. It is a burden I would not place on anyone.

Seeing your partner, your best friend, slowly lose more and more of her independence in front of your eyes is such a helpless feeling. It is scary, it is sad, it is frustrating.

The only thing that has gotten me through this first year is the fact that Terry is so upbeat. She does not get scared, she does not get sad, and she does not get frustrated. She even has a sense of humor about it, saying with a laugh to people when she has a problem doing something “I’m demented.”

Which brings me back to that damned circle.

What if Terry was in my circle? What if she threw being “demented”  into the middle?  Which problem would I take, mine of being a caregiver and seeing my best friend go through this, or go through it myself as an Alzheimer’s victim?

My first instinct was the same as if I was thinking of my kids. When they were little I’d wish I could suffer their pain for them when they needed stitches or broke a wrist or needed surgery. I would switch places with them in a second if I could have.

But if I switched places with Terry, switched our problems in that circle, she would have to be my caregiver. (She would also have to be the breadwinner, something she has never been. She has always worked, but mostly less than 40 hours a week so she could be there for the kids.)

Now she would have to be there for me. I don’t know if I would want her to be in that situation.

Because right now Terry is handling her Alzheimer’s better than I am. It doesn’t seem to get to her the way it sometimes gets to me. She seems happier to me than I am.

There were no truer words ever spoken than : “Happy wife, happy life.”

As this horrible disease progresses, I might feel differently about what problem I would take out of that circle. My circle that probably would also have Job in it as well. (that’s pronounced jobe for you pagans out there, as in ‘patience of Job’ because of all of the troubles beset upon him in the Bible).

So as Good Friday, Passover and Eastern Sunday arrive, I will try to put my problems and those of my best friend Terry in perspective with others, and see how others handle their problems.

Terry is handling them better than I am. Maybe, probably, others are too. What would Jesus do? What would my Terry do?

What am I going to do?

Until next time, Happy Easter

Bud