Mayhem

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and while many people around the world were celebrating May Day yesterday, I was dealing with Mayhem.

I intended to write something yesterday about May Day. I even painted a pole and decorated it with flowers for inspiration. I based my May Pole on the only one I ever saw; the one Oscar and Felix were dancing around in Central Park during the credits of the early ‘70s TV show “Odd Couple.”

I never got a chance to attach the ribbons to the top of my May Pole yesterday. I was dealing with too much mayhem.

Mayhem. You know, chaos. And I don’t mean KAOS, the evil organization my favorite spy of all time, Agent 86 Maxwell Smart used to battle. Although, I was feeling like I was losing CONTROL. There are so many times when I wished I had a cone of silence.

Theses days I have no silence, just Mayhem. Like havoc, disorder, bedlam. Mayhem.

These days it is like I am stuck in an Allstate insurance commercial. Always dealing with that guy in the suit with the black eye and a butterfly bandage above the other eye who represents mayhem. The ringing cell phone you try to reach underneath the passenger seat in the car while driving. The satellite dish on the roof of your house that you try to adjust yourself. The wife having violent hallucinations due to Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

I spend so much of my time putting out fires I should join the IAFF.

I thought I could handle it when my meek and mild wife began hallucinating, talking gibberish and becoming violent.

Causing mayhem.

I grew up in the ‘60s, when, in Catholic grade school, we would have the May Procession. I remember it as a lot of standing and singing, but it always smelled good with the flowers. Back then there were hardcore Catholics, going to Mass said in Latin, and I was taught that sometimes, even if you were good, you had to go through Purgatory to expiate your sins before going to Heaven. Well, lately I have become pretty convinced that I have done my time in purgatory.

Lately I feel I have been rolling downhill like a snowball heading for hell.

But the Pope recently said something that people mistook as him saying there may not really be a hell.

That is something my wife Terry has believed for the last 15 years or so, once she began studying the Bible. She believed that Heaven was for a very select few, the rest of the people who lived good lives would return to a new system and live on a perfect earth, like a Garden of Eden.

And those who lived lives not worthy of reward, well they would not go to hell. They would just die. Done. End. Fin. No hell. Just nothing. Game over, losers!

Well, I can testify that there certainly is a hell, and I believe I am living in it right now.

Things in the Bible are often said three times for emphasis. “Holy, Holy, Holy.” The cock crowed three times. Gomer Pyle saying “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.”

I wish I could have written this yesterday, so I could have cried out “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

I realize I am not an aviator or a sailor, but I am afraid I am in distress. I am in distress seeing my wife in distress.  We are experiencing extreme anxiety and sorrow. Pain.

There are several signs that I am living in hell. For one, my dreams are better than my actual life.

When I was living in Miami in college, I was always the last one to bed and the first one to get up in the morning. I was having too much fun to sleep.

Since college days I have not been a morning person. Lately, I absolutely hate mornings. When I get out of bed in the early AM (to see a man about a horse) I am as quiet as I can be because I dread it when Terry wakes up. I want pre-mornings in bed to last as long as possible. Because lately my wife wakes up fightin’ mad and stays that way almost till noon.

There will be 15-20 minute periods here and there when she will calm down, and I take advantage of those moments to feed, wash and dress her. Too often the calm periods don’t last as long as the task. The worst is in the shower. I am so scared that she will freak out while in the slippery tub.

Or in public.

My beautiful wife’s outbursts have not only gotten more often but have also reached new audiences. They used to be just for me, but over the last month my son and daughter have experienced them. This past week Terry freaked out on me in a store. And the one that really scared me was the other day when she freaked out in the car while I was driving. That especially bothered me because we have a 5 hour, 250 mile drive ahead of us in the near future to visit Terry’s family.

I know what you are thinking. Yes, there is medication to help prevent these outbursts. Thanks for the tip. I began them last October, and they worked, now and then. But back in the winter Terry became unable to swallow pills. So, being a college ‘edge-a-ma-gated pour-son,’ I came up with an alternative. I would dissolve her meds in a shot of water. That way she could drink the meds. They tasted like shit, so I had a second shot, a chaser, of juice, Gatorade or green tea. She would do the shot of meds, make the “bitter beer face” and then do the shot of good tasting liquid.

Done deal.

Until a month or two ago, when Terry could no longer do the med shot. She started spitting it out. SPITTING IT OUT!! One day’s worth of her meds cost whatever $630 a month divided by 30 equals. Don’t spit that out!

But she did. She spit it out once on the floor, once on her own shirt, once on me. (three times for emphasis) Time to come up with a new plan.  So I began going straight to the chaser. Dilute the meds in water and mix it with a drink. First attempt was bad. The Gatorade didn’t cut it. Orange juice worked for a few days but then I had to go to the hard stuff. Pineapple juice with coconut flavoring.

Some mornings it works, sometimes it doesn’t. So, I came up with a newer plan.

Crushing the meds between two spoons, mixing them in with her favorite yogurt, and adding granola so when she feels a crunch in her yogurt she isn’t specious.

So far, so good, but the situation is fluid. Always changing. Whenever I think I figured out the solution to the problem, the problem changes. Reminds me of 8^th grade algebra and trig.

This is my hell. My state of torment. Sorry Dante, there is nothing Devine about this and it certainly is not a Comedy.

It is mayhem.

Until next time, appreciate the harmony in your life. Chaos is only enjoyable when spelled with a K and is being fought by Agent 86.

Bud