Time

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and contrary to what Mick Jagger said, time is certainly NOT on my side, no its not.

I’ve heard for years people use the old expression “there just isn’t enough time in the day” and it’s true. It is also true that there just isn’t enough time in the week, or the month.

Not enough time to write my blog. At work I have no time to spare to write these days. I used to write it on my lunch hour. Now my lunch hour is spent driving home to be a caregiver.

When I am home with my wife Terry I can’t find time to write. I am usually tending to her. Entertaining her, helping feed, bath and clothe her. Hanging out with her. I don’t want to take time away from that to write. Sometimes I want to, I just can’t.

This time of year I work about 70 hours a week, which includes every weekend and many nights.  A large part of that time is spent on the road and the good news is that when I do travel by car I can take Terry with me.

We just made our annual trip to Niagara Falls and it was great. The warmest and sunniest it has been in Western New York since we began going there five or six years ago.  Every year I work in Buffalo on Friday and 20 minutes away in Niagara on Sunday so on Saturday we go to Canada and visit the Falls.  This year it was about 35 degrees warmer than what it was last year when we were there. Very sunny. We got to see a rainbow in the Falls.

The best part about the trip was that for four straight days Terry was never out of my site.

The bad part of working so many hours this time of year is that most of the time I am working is time spent apart from Terry. That bothers me. Terry’s independence is dwindling. When I am not with her, her quality of life is declining. It is hard for her to entertain herself.

When Terry is home alone she enjoys watching country music videos on TV. They are short, three minute stories she can follow and they are set to music. Music has been so important for Terry since she was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

It is input her brain needs. And the songs can bring back memories.

Terry has been sleeping in lately, not getting up until 10 am or later. On cold or dreary days she sometimes sleeps till noon, staying warm and comfortable under the blankets.

And I love that!

First, because I am jealous. I would love to sleep in every once in a while.  I have not been an early riser since college days. (in college I was always the first one up in the morning and the last one to bed at night. I was having too much fun to sleep.)

Second, I love her sleeping in because I am more at ease at work knowing Terry is sleeping. I know she is safe and not bored or confused about anything. It is less time she has to entertain herself until I get home at lunch time and again at the end of the day.

If I am not there Terry can dress herself in the morning and fix herself cereal. She can make herself a sandwich for lunch if I am not there but I almost always am, making her soup or hot tea, two things she cannot make herself.

Terry can still wash and dry the dishes but each day the list of dishes that she no longer knows where they go continues to grow. We laugh about it when we find things in strange places.  I’m thankful that Terry’s personality allows her to laugh it off.   Her cognitive decline never gets to her the way it sometimes gets to me.

She can no longer wash or dry the clothes but she can sort them when they come off the line or out of the dryer.  But like the dishes, she sometimes has trouble remembering what clothes go in what drawers.

When I am at work I try to leave for her a list of things to do, obviously things she still can do, to keep her busy while I am not home.

In the song Time Is on My Side, Jagger sang about a woman leaving a guy, with the guy saying she’ll come running back, that time is on his side. Yes it is.

Terry’s independence is leaving her, and it is not coming back. Time is not on our side. No it isn’t.

I’ve read about how stressful being a caregiver to a spouse can be. The stress I can handle, for now. The time Terry and I share these days is great. We have grown so close and we laugh a lot.

I think the amount of time it takes is what makes being a caregiver so difficult. It is a lot like being a working single parent, time-wise, that is.  

(You can’t compare nurturing your child’s growth to trying to slow your spouse’s decline. But time-wise, being a caregiver is a lot like caring for one of your children.)

And like raising children, it is something that you wouldn’t trade for anything. Sure, I wish Terry did not have Alzheimer’s. But she does. So how can we make the best of this time?

By sleeping in, shortening the days. Shortening the time she is alone. On days that I do not have to work at night I come home at lunch time. Then I come home at the end of the day so Terry is only alone for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon. If I do have to work in the evening, I come home early, pick Terry up and she is with me. And sometimes Terry hangs with our son or one of our daughters while I work nights or weekends.

That happened recently. I had a long day in the gym, two different teams competing, too long a day for Terry to be there, so she stayed at home, where she feels comfortable, safe. Our oldest daughter and our son both came home that day, took Terry for a walk around the park, fed her her meals and basically just hung out with her.

That night and the next day all I heard from Terry was “We have great kids.” And we do.

We have that on our side. We just don’t have time on our side. No we don’t.

When Terry was first diagnosed in the spring of 2014 the doctors said it was good to start the medication ASAP because it can give us an extra year or two.  Well, it is coming up on two years since Terry began taking memantine and donepezil.

This time of year I used to soo much look forward to spring, as most people do I guess. Now I look forward to lunch time to see Terry. I look forward to the end of the work day to see Terry. I look forward to our road trips together. I no longer look to far forward.

Sometimes I wish I could call “Time!”  Stop the clock. Take a time out.

Time is flying by and the future is not a pleasant one. If only time could stand still for a while. But it can’t.

There are two theories about what time is. One is that time is part of the structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. The other is that time is not an actual existing dimension that events and objects “move through”; it is just an intellectual concept that enables us to sequence and compare events.  That’s why you can’t travel through time.

Time travel has always been a part of people’s imaginations, from H. G. Wells to Marty McFly.

If I could control time I think I would just hit the pause button. I realize Terry is not going to get better, we can’t go back in time. But I pray that she doesn’t get worse.

Not to be confused with Mick Jagger, back in the 80s Boy George sang “time won’t give me time, and time makes lovers feel like they’ve got something real.”

Terry and I feel we have something real, alright. Dementia. We’re running out of time.

A band closer to my liking, Green Day, sang “So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why. It’s not a question but a lesson learned in time. It’s something unpredictable but in the end is right, I hope you had the time of your life.”

Terry and I, believe it or not, are having the time of our lives, at least what is left of them, because it is only going to get worse. We are certainly going to be tested.  We live in the present. We don’t look forward to the future. We don’t have enough time to do that.

Until next time, hope time is on your side.

Bud