Work Ethic

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I just spent eight hours on a Saturday working. That is like saying water is wet. The sky is blue.

The problem is my son was visiting my wife Terry and me today, a week before he moves away for his job promotion. I was too busy to visit with him as much as I wanted because I was working, but at least he got to spend some quality time with his mother.

My oldest came home today as well. She also came home to spend time with her mother, as she always does on weekends. She took her mother shopping for clothes while I worked.

My wife Terry had a great day today with her two oldest children. I know because she has told me about a dozen times in the last two hours.

She tends to repeat herself these days, two years after being diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Back to my work day today. I have always prided myself on my strong work ethic. It is a trait I learned from my father and grandfather and I am happy to say I see a lot of in my three kids.

Today I was able to work while the kids were with my Terry. Today I was able to concentrate on my job.

But lately I am afraid I have not been able to concentrate on my job as much as I should. Lately I have not had the best of work ethics.

For the last 38 years, since I graduated from college, during the months from September to June I have worked six or seven days a week.  

A lot of my friends are big college football fans. I never got into it as much as they did because I worked every Saturday when the majority of the college games were being played.

Over the last 35 years I have worked an average of  70 hours a week during those nine plus non-summer months.

And I wore that as a badge. Something to be proud of. Something to hang your hat on.

The coaches and athletes seem to admire it when they see you coming out of the gym late at night on coming in early on the weekends. They put in a lot of hours and they feel a bond when they see you doing the same thing.

I enjoyed my career and didn’t mind working the extra hours needed to do my job.

That is, until the kids started growing up. Missing softball and Little League games, soccer games, school plays and track meets, that was tough. But I had a work ethic. It was important to provide for my family the best way I knew how. 

It just so happened that my chosen profession required a lot of nights and weekends during the academic school year. And working games that I could not get out of, not even to attend out of town weddings and even some funerals. (The only home basketball game I ever missed in all my years was to attend my father-in-law’s funeral. I worked a home baseball game the day after my own father passed away.)

So many family functions I had to miss because of my job. My career. But that stops now.

Now I find myself taking long lunches when my schedule allows. Leaving work early when my schedule allows. Working from home instead of the office when the schedule allows.

But this lack of work ethic is not about ‘me’ time.

It is not to go play golf. It is not to go to the bar. It is not to try to enjoy my life a little more. My reasoning is somewhat eternal.

I believe that when we die we will be judged on what we did and did not do with our lives. And that judgment will determine where we spend eternity.

I don’t think I am alone in this belief.

Personally, I think I will be judged more for how I did as a caregiver for my wife, than I will on how well I did my job, or how many hours I put in at the office.

I think what I do for my wife will out-weigh what I do in my career.

Obviously, I still have to work. A priority is certainly to keep a roof over my wife’s head and food on her plate. So I can’t just retire.

Although, I’m getting to the age now where many of my friends are getting close to or are actually retiring. I am so jealous.

But with me, there is still a mortgage to pay off. There is insurance we need and a prescription plan I need through work.  (I only pay $20 a month at the drug store for two prescriptions. One of the drugs does not have a generic brand, so if I did not have insurance I would be paying over $400 a month for it).

Although that argument about the prescriptions doesn’t hold as much weight as it used to. I am afraid the meds Terry takes just aren’t cutting it anymore. I will keep giving them to her but I can tell the “additional two years” the doctors said they would give us are about up.

My wife Terry’s Alzheimer’s is in the middle stages now and she can no longer do so many things. One of them is entertain herself.

Left alone while I am at work is tough on Terry. She can only watch so many music videos. The chores she can no longer do far out-weight the ones she can still do.

That is the reason for my work ethic decline. I need to be home more. I need to be with her more.

But Thank God for nice weather again.

Terry has been outside the last several days while I am at work and she is beginning to enjoy herself again. She is fascinated by seeing airplanes and helicopters in the sky. It amuses her. The fresh air is great for her, and our backyard is full of birds, squirrels and rabbits for her to watch.

The great outdoors have been entertaining her. Winter ended just in time.

When I am home we are outside more now, taking walks, having a catch out back and going to the park to shoot hoops.  Terry loves this and is enjoying her life again.

And that makes me happy. A wise old man once said (or was it on a coffee mug, I’m not sure) “A happy wife, a happy life.”

No truer words were ever spoken (or written on a coffee mug). When Terry is happy, I am very happy. My life is happy.

So I am afraid my work ethic reputation might take a hit, but I don’t mind.  I will still do my job to the best of my ability. I just won’t spend as many hours away from home.  I can’t.

Being a caregiver is the most important job I ever had.

I have worked at my present job for 35 years, and my career pays the bills, but being a caregiver to my Terry I believe will be my legacy.

It is also what I will be judged on. Having a strong work ethic is important, and I am glad our children all have one. It is essential to survive in this world.

But now I have to help my wife survive. And that may be essential to my afterlife.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to get into Heaven by being a good caregiver.

I am trying to give Terry a heaven on earth as long as I can, until her Alzheimer’s makes it a hell on earth for both of us.

Until next time, hope you can enjoy doing what you will be judged on.

Bud

Sports, Stupid

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and my shoulder is sore from throwing and my legs are sore from chasing down rebounds.

And I feel great about that.

Since my wife Terry has moved into the middle or moderate stage of her Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, her reasoning has become unusual, to say the least, and she’s had changes in mood and behavior that she has never had before.  

I don’t feel too great about that.

But almost as bad as that is the fact that her communication skills continue to diminish.

It is almost impossible for anyone to have a conversation with Terry on the phone without me being there, and lately it is becoming harder for her to communicate with even me on the phone. 

When Terry was first diagnosed two years ago the team of doctors and graduate students at the clinic all gathered in a room with us to give us the news. When we walked in and I saw a box of tissues next to our seats I knew that was never a good sign. 

While explaining everything to us, the Doctor said that when communication skills break down, it is important that I find leisurely physical activities that Terry can still enjoy.  Playing a musical instrument, painting, gardening, dancing. Physical things that we have enjoyed in the past.

To try to lighten the mood in this somber meeting room, I turned to Terry but said loud enough for everyone to hear “He said we have to have more sex!”

When emotions are running high it is easy to get a laugh.

And now that it is happening I remember that talk we had about the physical activities. Unlike many of her siblings, Terry never played a musical instrument. Terry and I were never much of a dancing couple. She was never a knitter. One of Terry’s sisters bought her these colored pencils and adult coloring books (when I heard ‘adult’ I mistakenly thought they would be risqué pictures) but Terry wasn’t into it, risqué or not.

I had to find things that Terry and I can enjoy doing. We still take long walks when my schedule and the weather allow. But that wasn’t enough. I had to get her off the couch and away from the TV.  I try to give her chores to do, folding laundry and washing dishes, but she really can’t do much more than that anymore on her own.

And then one day it hit me.  Sports, stupid!

Now that the weather is turning nicer, I brought out the old basketball and took Terry to the park to shoot hoops.

She was smiling from ear to ear.

Terry grew up in a house with a backboard and rim nailed up to the garage and she loved to shoot hoops when she was a school kid. Being five foot nothing, weighting a hundred and nothing, she never played organized basketball but with the neighborhood kids and the many siblings, she has many fond memories of playing basketball growing up.

Besides, she can really shoot. She can make more foul shots than I can. Sports are always more fun when you are good at them.

We also have this softball sized ball that is much softer than a softball, and we have been having a catch with that in our back yard.

More ear to ear smiling.

And I have to admit I was smiling pretty wide myself. Seeing Terry smile is something I no longer take for granted. With the advancement of the disease she is not as happy-go-lucky as she used to be. She worries. She gets nervous.  She gets scared. Most of the time over things that are not real. Sometimes it is having to watch me go to work.

But having a catch with Terry was great. It got her out of the house, moving around. And for me, it was like old times. I threw a ball every day for years in my teens and 20s, playing high school, American Legion and college baseball. Especially in college, when the South Florida weather allowed us to play all year. The month of December was the only time we did not play.

And now that spring weather has arrived Terry and I are going to play. We’ll have a catch in the back yard. We’ll shoot hoops at the park or nearby school yard. And we’ll continue to take our long walks.   It won’t be long before we will be taking our walks at the Jersey Shore.

But I try not to look to far forward. I love the summer but with Terry’s new symptoms I hate to see what she will and will not be able to do in the months to come.

My friends tell me I have to look forward, to figure out a plan on how I am going to continue to care for Terry and continue to work. I won’t be retiring any time soon, so decisions are going to have to be made.

But for now, I have decided that we need to play more sports.

Next I have to come up with a physical activity that Terry can do without me. We had a basketball hoop in our back yard when the kids were small but that is long gone.  I never thought I’d put another one up but I might have to look into that.  Or maybe she can work on her ball handling, her dribbling.

We’ll come up with something. All I know is that it will have something to do with sports.

Until next time, hope you have a sporting time.

Bud