T hemove from Kwa Zulu-Nata l to Cape Tow n with my dad was as clandestine as a CIA operation. Finally admitting that I couldn’t manage his inadequately trained carers any longer, I took the diff icult decision to move my father to a care home. His dementia means he gets anxious, especially about change, so I secretly packed his bags and only informed him that we were ‘going on holiday ’ on the morning of our f light. My own anxiety levels were sky high. I was afraid he wouldn’t be allowed to f ly – Ihadn’t informed the airline of his condition. We arrived in Cape Tow n without incident. My dad accepted the ‘f iblet’ (a white lie told to a person with dement ia) that he’d be staying in a five-star hotel and that I’d be with my friend, Angie, across the road. With trepidation, I bid him farewell. The next day, I returned to the care home to find him excitedly doing seated exercises to music. The presence of the nurse super v isor’s sausage dog Lucy van Heerden ( have you ever met a dog with a surname?) delighted him.
Determined that Dad should continue to believe he was on holiday, Angie and I took him to a restaurant nestled a mong milkwood trees. He spent ages perusing the menu, then announced solemnly, ‘There’s chimpanzee on the menu!’ I was aghast – either we’d st umbled on a bush meat restaurant or Dad’s dementia was worse. Hastily, I paged through until I st umbled across what he’d been referring to: an unappetising pizza topped with pineapple and avocado.
Our move to the Cape not only rejuvenated Dad – whose movement and language skills improved – but me, too. His care home is close to the Two Oceans Marathon course, of ten voted ‘the most breathtaking route in the world’. I spotted lone runners grinding their way up the steep hills, something I never saw in Kwa Zulu-Natal where the securit y sit uation made it too dangerous to run a lone. A few days after we arrived, I donned my skapris and set off at sunset for my first solo run beyond the conf ines of a compound surrounded by an electric fence.
