We
Be Happy
By Bud
Focht
Hi,
my name is Bud and I admit I have been guilty of saying “we” when referring to
my favorite sports teams. “We (Rider
University Broncs) won today.” “We (Boston
Red Sox) won last night.” “We
(Philadelphia Phillies) lost last night, again.”
“WE
WIN!” was a famous headline in the Boston Globe back in the late 1940s (you
might have seen it in the 1980s on the beginning of the TV show Cheers) when the
New England baseball team (not the American League Red Sox.) won the pennant. Boston
had a National League team called the Braves before it moved west to Milwaukee
and then south to Atlanta.
I
had the opportunity to do the color commentary on a handful of radio broadcasts
of several NCAA Division I Baseball Tournaments, and even though I was
associated with one of the teams in the games, I tried to stay neutral and
refer to the hometown team as “Rider” or “the Broncs,” not “we.”
But
I have to admit when things started to get a little exciting I sometimes said “We
need to do this,” “We need to do that” or especially “We win!”
I am
afraid my wife Terry has taken this ‘We’ thing to a whole new and somewhat unhealthy
level.
Terry,
now in her late 50s and in the middle stages of Early Onset Alzheimer’s
Disease, was once a star tennis player. She might have been a ‘big fish in a small
pond,’ but she was still a star.
She
was the number one singles player all four years for her Division III college
team and also played first doubles. She won so many summer city-league tournaments
in her small hometown in Rhode Island (is there anything NOT small in Rhode
Island?) that she switched over from the women’s to the men’s tournament, where
she reached the finals (of 32 players) all three times.
Because
of her love for tennis, Wimbledon has always been one of our summer staples. Go
to the Shore, watch the movie Jaws, and get up early at the end of the
fortnight to watch the Wimbledon finals.
But
this year things were different. This year I was retired, having quit my job
back in the fall to give Terry the 24-hour-a-day attention she unfortunately
now needs. This year I was home the entire fortnight to watch the Championships
at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club at Wimbledon.
Thanks
to the DVR, we watched the entire first two days of Wimbledon, start to finish,
without getting up at 7am and, even better, fast-forwarding through
commercials. It was great. Terry was loving it. Until she started to get a
little too involved.
When
the players Terry and I were rooting for won, whether it was because he or she
was American or an underdog or someone we were familiar with, Terry would say
“We won!” and get way to excited.
During
the second day of Wimbledon I was in the kitchen making Terry her lunch when
she started to laugh and say “He’s losing to a girl! He’s losing to a girl!”
When I came out expecting to see maybe an upset by a player with long hair, I
didn’t. It took me a while to figure it out but the ‘girl’ was Terry. She honestly believed that she was playing
and winning.
After
that every match where we had a player who we wanted to win, she became that player,
in her mind, man or woman.
I
admit I may have, on occasion, lived vicariously through my kids when they
enjoyed success, but that was nothing like this.
It
got scary, seeing your wife lose her sense of reality. I would say “Hey Ter,
Venus won today. We like her.” Only to
hear “I’m better than her. I can beat her.” And she wasn’t kidding. In her mind
she thought she could.
This
coming from the shyest, most modest athlete I have ever come across. And in my
42 years in college athletics (4 years as a student-athlete, 1 year as a grad.
assistant, 2 years as a part-time SID and 35+ years in a D-1 program) I have
dealt with over 3,000 college athletes. And not one was ever as unassuming as
Terry. The first time I met her I interviewed her after she upset a Division II
team’s best player, and she stared at her shoes the entire interview while giving
one or two-word answers.
But
after the interview she looked me in the eye and smiled and I was hooked.
But
this year we had to stop watching Wimbledon after the third round. She got too
involved.
I’ve
read where hallucinating, or at least losing touch with reality, is part of our
future with this horrible disease, but this was our first major run in with it.
And it was scary.
Almost
as scary as the violent out-bursts.
Chuck
Wepner was a Jersey Boy who could take a punch. In 1975 he went the distance
with the greatest boxer ever, Muhammad Ali, and that performance inspired Sylvester
Stallone to write the movie Rocky.
Wepner
was not what would be considered a great fighter, but he could take a punch from
the best of them.
With
Terry’s recent and more frequent angry, violent out-bursts, Wepner has become a
role model of mine.
But
I am learning this caregiver thing, slowly but surely. I am learning how to
deal with Terry’s bizarre behavior and occasional violence.
Some
300 years ago there was a play (I didn’t see it) with a line that said “Music
hath charms to soothe the savage beast.”
No
one who ever met Terry would ever associate her in the same sentence or even same
paragraph as a savage beast, but I am afraid this horrible disease has done
just that.
Ever
since Terry was diagnosed she has had somewhat of a soundtrack to her life. We
always play music when there is no other stimulus, and even when there is. She
likes it and it is good for her. Input.
There
is a song we’ve been listening to since we first heard it in May, “Happy People”
by Little Big Town. For the past few weeks every time Terry hears it when we
are in our back yard she starts to dance. We have video recorded her doing so
and sent it to her family to rave reviews.
It
is better than any funny cat or epic fail video you have ever seen. It is like
what Steve Martin and Willie Nelson both said a long time ago about banjo
music, how you can’t play a sad song on the banjo.
Terry
can’t be mad, for long, when she hears that song.
I am
still learning this caregiver gig, but fortunately I AM learning. The good
things to do and the bad things that are happening to Terry’s shrinking brain.
The bad things that are happening to us.
Like
Wepner, I am learning to take a gut punch. I would have never expected to get
one during Wimbledon, but with the help of the proper music, I hope that ‘We’ can
win the game.
The
set and match, I am afraid, have already been decided.
Like
Little Big Town sings, “Life is short, and love is rare, and we all deserve to
be happy while we’re here.”
Until
next time, We will try to Be Happy People.
Bud
