Thank God for God

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I truly believe that the only reason I am still living the great life I am living is because of Devine Intervention.

Let me clarify “the great life” I am living and “Devine Intervention.”

When I say Devine Intervention I’m not talking major miracles here.

Major miracles are like Lazarus of Bethany coming back to life. Water changing to wine at that wedding in Cana. The 1980 United States ice hockey team made up of college kids beating the professional, steroid-enhanced Russian team in the medal round on its way to the Olympic gold medal.

Those are major miracles, of Biblical proportion.

No, I’m not talking about that drastic of interventions. I’m talking about some of the less-noticed ones. But I noticed. And I am thankful.

My senior year in college I was somehow able to secure one of the top graduate assistantships in my field, in the athletics department at a university in New Orleans. I was set to begin my career in NOLA, one of the most unique cities in the United States, famous for its cuisine, music, and of course Mardi Gras. A 21-year-old partying, student-athlete’s dream come true.

Until the director of athletics at my own college in Miami, having known me from the baseball team, offered me the same deal, only at my alma mater. I had a choice to make. Go to a large university in the Big Easy and learn my craft, my chosen profession, and be all by myself in an exciting new town, or stay in my comfort zone and return to my many friends, girls and guys (especially girls), in fun-in-the-sun Miami to begin my professional career.

I unwisely turned down the New Orleans gig and chose to return to South Florida.  Unwisely because at the very last minute the funding for the job at my alma mater fell through.

Shit! Should’ve gone to New Orleans, where the person who replaced me went on to a lucrative job with the NCAA and later with the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA).

But as my grandmother always used to say, “When God closes a door He always opens a window.”

That window was a last minute grad-assistantship at a small college in Rhode Island.

I was thinking ‘Rhode Island? Is that part of New York?’ Rhode Island is a pretty small state. In fact, the smallest. How small WAS their small college?

Well, it was big enough to have an intercollegiate tennis team among its 15 NCAA Division III varsity sports.

And the rest, as they say, is history. I spent three years in New England, fell in love, went on to get a real job in New Jersey, went back to RI to marry the star of the tennis team, and we began our life together.

I often wondered what if I had chosen that large university in New Orleans over the small college in Miami. What if the Miami job hadn’t fallen through? I would have never met my soulmate, my wife Terry.

Devine Intervention. I am sure of it.  And I am very grateful.

When I said I was grateful for living the great life I am living, by no means did I mean I am living the high life, but I am still living, still breathing. And so is my wife Terry. And we are living and breathing together.  

And by together, I mean 24-hours-a-day together.

I once wrote a feature story that ran in a national publication on a married couple that coaches together. Both teachers, the husband was the girl’s high school basketball coach and his wife was his assistant coach. And the wife was a college head field hockey coach and the husband was her assistant.  In the story, I wrote how the best thing about a married couple working together was that they were together all of the time. And the worst thing about it was the fact that they were together ALL OF THE TIME.

Once Terry entered the middle stage of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease and required 24/7 assistance, I was very fortunate to be able to retire (five or six years earlier than I had planned on) to take care of her. If the statistics on the Alzheimer’s web site are correct, my premature pension (better than a gold watch, much less than a nest egg) should last just about as long as my wife’s shrinking brain does.

So when I miss going out with the guys, going to the Phillies games, going to the Jersey Shore, I have to remind myself that I am going to miss Terry so much more.

When times get tough, when the frustration of her condition causes her to display uncharacteristic behavior such as anger and even violence, I have time-to-time felt sorry for myself. “Why is God doing this to Terry? Why is He doing this to me?”

I have to keep reminding myself that God doesn’t work that way. He is not doing this to us. In fact, He is helping us handle this.

We all have our own crosses to bear. We all have our own problems. There is a common belief, one that I 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 from that pile in the middle to have, most people, seeing what others have to deal with, would take their own problem back.

No matter how bad Terry and I have it, I know that there are people out there who have it worse. As we will in the future.

I’m reminded of that poem about the footprints in the sand. Something about walking with God on a beach during your life and seeing two sets of footprints. During the difficult times the person noticed only one set of footprints and wondered why God had left him alone. He later came to know that God did not leave him. The one set of footprints during the difficult times was God carrying him.

When I get pissed at our situation, when I get hurt (feelings, not physical bruises) because Terry lashes out at me even though I wait on her all day, feeding her, bathing her, dressing her, trying to entertain her, I have to take a step back and be thankful. Thankful for the good times we had over the last 38 years. Thankful for the good times we have now, like when Terry laughs.

I have to be thankful. Because I know the good times are getting less and less, and the tough times are getting tougher. That is what is so bad about this disease. It is only going to get worse. It IS getting worse.

More and more often these days, there is only one set of footprints in the sand.

Thank God for the good days I have with Terry. Thank God for allowing me to be with her 24/7 during the middle and last stage of this fucked up disease.

Thank God for God.

Until next time, no matter how bad things get, thank God and be grateful for what you have.

Bud

61*

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I just celebrated* my 61^st birthday. I am afraid the word celebrated needed an asterisk.

The greatest baseball player ever, Babe Ruth, hit 60 home runs during the 1927 season. To let you know how many that really was at that time, there were only 16 major league teams back then and 13 of them had less than 60 home runs that season. As a team.

Not including his own team, the NY Yankees, Ruth hit more home runs himself that season than 13 of the other 15 teams hit.

Back then teams played 154 games in a season.

Roger Maris hit 61* home runs during the 1961 season, the first year MLB expanded to a 162-game schedule.  Because of the love for the Bambino, combined with the extra eight games, some baseball ‘purists’ wanted an asterisk next to Maris’ new single season home run mark of 61 bombs because he had extra games to do it.

I recently turned 61 years old. And I have to tell you, the word celebrated in the first paragraph has an asterisk because it was by far the worst birthday I have ever experienced.

I am sure as the years go by I will experience worse birthdays, but until now this was the worst.

And let me tell you, I’ve had some bad ones.

There was this one birthday that comes to mind, about 25 years ago, when I had this new, beautiful secretary. I came into work on my birthday a little bummed and she noticed I was a little out of sorts. When she kept asking me what was wrong I confided in her that I was having a bad morning.

I told her how every year my parents would call me on my birthday, 7:05 in the morning, to ask me if I knew what they were doing so many years ago on that date. But for some reason that day they didn’t call. When I was in the kitchen getting ready for work that morning my wife didn’t mention anything about my birthday, nor did the kids, as they hurried their own preparation for the day.

So when I was feeling a little sorry for myself at work, my secretary suggested we go out to lunch. I don’t usually eat lunch, opting to work-out instead, but she was just trying to cheer me up, so I said okay. When we arrived at the restaurant that she had suggested, it was closed. Of course!, I thought.

She then suggested that since she lived right around the corner from that restaurant, we should go to her place for a nice lunch, and maybe, since it was a summer Friday, to just blow off the afternoon and have a few cocktails at her place.

I’d never done anything like this before and despite the fact that she was beautiful, I never thought of her as anything but a fellow worker.  But that day I was feeling low and she was being soo nice, so I said sure.

When we got to her place she fixed us a couple of drinks and then, after a few, she said she wanted to show me the redecorating she had done in her bedroom. We entered her bedroom and she said she would be right back, that she was going into her walk-in closet to get into more ‘comfortable’ clothes.

A few minutes later she came out of her closet with a birthday cake, followed by my parents, my wife and my kids, all carrying presents and singing happy birthday.

And there I sat on the bed, with nothing on but my socks.

That was a bad birthday.

But this years was worse.

My wife Terry, now in the middle stages of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, had no idea it was my birthday. No big deal. That was the least of my concerns these days. My only concern is trying to help Terry have a good day.

Terry’s emotional spectrum has grown to the extremes these days, with her highs being higher but her lows are much, much lower. She gets very happy to the point of dancing and laughing. And there is no better sound than Terry laughing. But she also gets very mad, frustrated I assume, to the point of violence.

The worst part is half of the stuff she gets made at these days is not even real. She is losing touch with reality, and that is scary.

My son came over after work and asked me how my birthday was and I summed it up by saying “It is rare that you enjoy a birthday in which you get hit,” especially when you get hit by the person who you spend your entire 24 hours a day feeding, bathing, clothing, taking care of.

Terry gets very agitated these days over trivial things, like being hungry. So I have the dilemma of feeding her as much as she wants, and watching her grow from 100 pounds to 150 pounds in the last year, or trying to manage her intake and run the risk of getting screamed at and slapped around.

I try to be positive around her, I really do, but it is really tough to see the person you love, the person you spend your entire day caring for, yell at you, curse you and even swing at you.

I’m not stupid. I know it is not Terry who is doing this. It is this fucked up disease. But I swear it reminds me of the book/movie The Exorcist sometimes. It is not the little girl Regan doing these horrible things, it is Satan. The Devil.

And I am not sure that it isn’t Satan doing this to Terry as well.

Terry was always a good, Catholic girl growing up, and when we were married she was always the perfect role model for not only our kids but the kids she taught gymnastics to at the YMCA, the kids she coached track, basketball and soccer to in CYO and the kids she taught physical education and computers to in grade school.

But about 15 years or so ago, when she seriously began her Bible Studies, her health issues began. The more she studied the Bible, the closer she got to God, who she began calling by His old school name, Jehovah, the more health issues she had.

To the point now where her brain is literally shrinking. She can no longer read the Bible without help, or anything else, for that matter.

Maybe it is Satan. Maybe it is just the way life goes sometimes. I don’t know. But I do know that it sucks!

It sucks more than having a bad birthday. It sucks more than putting an asterisk next to a record number. It sucks more than getting caught in nothing but your socks.

And what sucks even more is knowing that this most likely is not going to be the worst birthday I will celebrate*in my life.

I just hope that there are many more birthdays with my wife that may or may not suck. MLB extended its season from 154 to 162 games. I hope the amount of games Terry and I have in our season can be extended.

Until next time, I need more birthdays, good or bad, with Terry. I need more games. If need be I’ll take the asterisk.

Bud