‘Last time’ moments on a spring visit to the UK, May 2024

After over twenty five years of living thousands of miles away from my birth country, and many flights back and forth, I am still in awe of the fact I can be on the other side of the world in 24 hours. I remind myself that jet passenger services didn’t start until the late 1950s and up until then ocean liners were the way most people traversed long distances.

Anyone that’s read this blog for sometime will know that I frequently visit family in the UK during the equinox seasons (preferring to avoid the freezing northern hemisphere winter and wanting to avoid the peak travel time of summer holidays in the UK). One aspect of travelling in autumn and spring is having my senses completely shocked at the change in flora (the temperature of Wellington, New Zealand, and the UK isn’t too different around the equinox seasons and the length of daylight is similar).

As I commence my air travel, I enter a world inside – terminals and airplanes – for around 24 hours. When I land in the UK my first sight of the outdoors is from a car window, after a brief intake of ‘fresh’ air exiting the airport terminal and walking to the car. On this occasion, visiting in spring of 2024, the trees lining the motorways had the youthful flush of green buds, after a winter of bare branches that had been resting and waiting out the cold.

My sister and Dad met me at Manchester airport, closer to where my Dad was then living, with his wonderful older brother in Cheshire. Dad had told Claire he was worried that he wouldn’t recognise me, but Claire put him at ease, telling him, ‘She’ll be the lady with the big smile running towards you to give you a big hug’ – and that’s exactly what I did. Tears filled my eyes as I embraced Dad and my sister. So many times in the last ten years I have flown back to the UK to see Mum slowly taken by Alzheimer’s disease and now, as I disembarked the plane, I braced myself to see Dad – knowing he would have slipped away a little bit more than when I last saw him six months earlier – as he too is now suffering the same cruel disease.

After reuniting we quickly left the airport behind and headed to some gardens near by, to take a stroll in the fresh air together.

I didn’t know, at the time, that this was going to be the last time I would be greeted by Dad’s face at the airport arrivals. The all too brief time I had to spend with my Dad on this trip, two weeks, would be filled with many ‘lasts’. In just six months the disease had taken away more of his understanding of the world around him and he was struggling to differentiate night from day, to sleep, to understand how to call people on his phone, to navigate around the small town where he was living, to know what to wear in what weather, and to even understand the pace at which a car travels and the danger of walking out in front of one. He was hallucinating more and mixing up words, asking strangers on the street – whilst in our company – if they could tell him where the prison was (he meant the pub). It was becoming very clear that Dad was going to need more specialised care, in a safe environment, and medication to help him sleep – stronger than what a doctor would willingly give to someone living in the community. My sister and I started to talk about care options going forward, so grateful that Dad had at least enjoyed nearly two years living with his wonderful older brother, our amazing Uncle.

I suppose the reason it’s taken me so long to write this post is because I didn’t realise, until my Dad moved into a care home, in September of 2024, that all these moments were ‘lasts’ and at the time of the visit, though there were many wonderful moments, as I’ll soon write about, and the photos tell a picture perfect story, there were also a lot of worried conversations. I stayed with my sister whilst I was in the UK, a half hour drive away from where our Dad was living with our Uncle, and constant alerts would ping on my sister’s phone, as our Dad left our Uncle’s house. We would track him to check he’d made it back safely or whether we’d need to send out a search party. Thankfully the small town he was living is home to many caring people, who soon got to know our Dad, and there many times that my Uncle, or my sister, would receive a phone call from a caring member of the public, or the bar staff of the local pub he liked to frequent (and where he’d often leave his wallet and keys), or even a farmer that found my Dad (covered in mud) in a field after he’d got confused and lost his way.

Whilst we worried, and discussed best options for the future, we also tried to enjoy the moments we had together during my all too short visit. It was a delight to be in the country for the spring May Day celebrations and my cousin’s children were both in the parade. My sister and I had a really lovely day with our Dad and Uncle, watching the parade and celebrating the day with a few drinks in the pub afterwards. My Dad is always happier when he has loved ones close, helping to guide the conversation and bring up things he may fondly remember and find amusing, and also we understand his humour and can puzzle together to work out the things he wants to communicate with us – that would get muddled as his brain struggled to remember the words that best told a story.

My sister and I managed a couple of lovely little runs together on the hills near her home too, which is always a highlight of any trip for me. When we run on the hills I always think of the many walks we did as children. Dad was great at finding walks for us to do, wherever we were, and Sunday walks in all weathers were a staple ingredient of our childhood. My sister and I would race each other up the hills, falling in a heap of exhaustion at the top, catching our breath as Mum and Dad caught us up.

In the two weeks I was there, in early May, the weather swung from 3 degrees with sleet, to shorts and singlet weather! I was really pleased to get over my jet lag pretty quickly and after some walks in the hills my running legs returned pretty quickly. On the first weekend that I arrived my sister ran in one of the most famous fell faces in Britain, ‘Three Peaks Race’ (39km and 1,596m of elevation gain climbing the three Yorkshire Peaks of Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough). I was still recovering from the 50km ‘Faultline Ultra’ I’d ran a week before, on the day after my 50th Birthday, so I cheered her off on the start line and ran up one of the peeks, Pen-y-ghent, for a lovely loop run, returning in plenty of time to cheer my sister over the finish line, in under 5 hours.

I had a couple of solo hikes and runs in the hills whilst I was visiting too, whilst my sister was busy with other commitments. Her home is located near the Pennine Way and there are hills to run over in every direction the eye can see. It’s always an adventure running on public rights of way that cut across farm land with livestock. It was lambing season whilst I was there and I gave the ewes plenty of room, and didn’t make eye contact, as I calmly passed them and their lambs. I was terrified by a pack of growling dogs at one point, that were thankfully behind a fence (which I prayed didn’t have an escape holes in it!) as I sprinted fast, with my heart pounding! After the dogs, I crossed a very muddy field and tried to work out the map coordinates that looked to take me through a farm. Unfortunately, the farm was a crime scene and police told me I’d have to find a different route! I really didn’t want to have to pass the dogs again! Anyway, I found a route – but it did have a ‘Beware of the bull’ sign! Thankfully I didn’t encounter the bull! I felt like I was a character in a ‘Famous Five’ Enid Blyton book, that I used to read as a child!

The runs in the hills gave me such a gift of peace, but my dear Dad was never far from my thoughts and I wished he was still able to hike the hills as he had so many times before with my sister and I. We had managed to take him away on holiday to Scotland in September 2023 (briefly wrote about in a catch up post) and though he was clearly confused at times, and unable to remember one day from the next, he was quite happy in the moment. However, even then, it was becoming clear that walking was becoming harder for him, as his body wasn’t regulating his body temperature naturally, and after one hike he was quite delirious and it took my sister and I an hour to calm him, whilst ensuring he was fully rehydrated.

Visiting Dad at his brother’s house and taking him out for short walks was now more than enough for him, but I was so keenly aware of how precious each walk was, knowing that these were something that was becoming too much for him. It was also so sad that my dear Dad was so aware of the fact he had been able to achieve so much more. Only a few years earlier he was organising and leading walks for a U3A group where he lived. All of my life he’d been the one to organise holidays, walks and outings. He took huge delight in hosting visitors to our home and telling them about the history of places. His knowledge was so immense and he had such enthusiasm for sharing it with people.

Whilst I was there we enjoyed walking around the town of Knutsford (posing on the fixed in place penny-farthing bike!), visiting the Anderton Boat Lift and walking alongside the River Weaver and catching up with my Dad’s oldest sister in the historic city of Chester.

I’m so grateful I have these moments to look back on and treasure, but it’s painfully sad knowing that I’ll no longer be able to take Dad out for these kind of adventures again, as the slow goodbye has started. This has been the first Christmas where I’ve not been able to talk with my Dad (he gets confused on a phone or video call and the time zone difference from New Zealand to the UK makes organising a call with the care home so difficult – and often Dad isn’t in the right frame of mind for a call). I know that Dad is being cared for and safe, that is a huge comfort, but when I’m so many miles away from him it’s as though there’s a radio silence – he’s in the world, living and breathing, and yet we are unable to connect.

After the visit in May 2024 I visited again, in October 2024, seeing Dad in the care home for the first time. I’ll write about that in another blog post.

My flight back to New Zealand took me from Spring to Autumn, and the increasingly shorter days that greeted me felt like a nod to the passing of time and the importance of treasuring the seasons of life. As my Dad’s memories fade, I must hold close to the times we’ve been so fortunate to share.