The Visit
I stood at the reception of the nursing home where my father was being kept. The cool, air-conditioned hall, the air still, and the smell of urine. A woman at the corner of the staff room – our eyes met. She lowered her gaze. I hear the sound of metal cranking as a young care worker pushes the wheelchair for his patients from the hallway. A faint smile and nod. Then, he avoided my eyes when he passed through. Not a single word spoken, and I was already feeling judged. How dare you abandon the parent?
I was escorted to the first floor, where he stayed. He was completely bed-bound when not in a wheelchair. He was so skinny that his collarbones were sticking out of his white hospital gown. His veins were visible through his thin, sagging skin, and his hands were shaking, clinging to the wheelchair handle. He remembered nothing. But he seemed excited to see me turn up at the door. Maybe he did remember me as his daughter. Or it was just that he was excited to see anyone other than nurses visiting him.
This is not the man I remembered as my father. He had no mental capacity. I rarely visited this place since he was taken in. I did not see the point in visiting any more.
I hear people’s grief when their parents have lost their mental capacity due to dementia. They talk about missing the relationships they had. They miss their mum and dad and grieve the loss. Then I ask myself. What did I lose when my father went into care? Well, actually, not much. Really. Not much. I was relieved.
The Champion’s Daughter
My father was an elite gymnast in his 20s. And then he became an elite coach in his 30s and 40s. He coached gymnastics and judo as his main sports, and enjoyed downhill skiing as his side gig. He was always surrounded by young kids who had good competitive potential. Naturally, he and his social circles expected my sister and me to go into sports, or, even if not, to be good at some sport. My sister smashed the regional record in long jump at the junior school and claimed our father’s attention. I struggled. I was cross-legged and was slow and clumsy at everything. I attempted ballet and performing arts instead. But I was never selected for a main role, worthy of parental attention. When he did come to see my performance, he sighed and said, “You looked like Donald Duck…. ”
So I gave up the expectation that I would ever be good enough to have a competitive edge in sports. I gave up the hope that my father would ever be interested in me. But I loved being outdoors. I learned to run around in the rice field and play with butterflies and grasshoppers, away from home, away from the critical eyes of the parents. I also learned to be at the gym, sitting and watching students being coached by my father. His students were always very kind. I didn’t need anyone to coach, but I learned by watching. No matter what my father said to me, he was always my star, and I always wanted to be where he was.
The Long Decline
I noticed a slight change in gear when I was turning to the 20s. He was beginning to be resentful and bitter that he was no longer able to compete against younger peers in sports. He spoke of the past glory and achievement. He said these younger peers would never have beaten him had he been the same age as them. The only difference was the age. It wasn’t the technique, strength or power. There was no one who could beat him. When the physio gave him an exercise, he scoffed at the lack of knowledge and experience of the physio. If the exercise did not involve power production or raising the heart rate, it was not worth doing. And he drank. A large amount of alcohol – every day.
He withdrew from the sporting and coaching career completely in his early 60s. Too many injuries and too much alcohol. He had half of his stomach removed, plagued by the cancer. Then, a stroke attacked him. Followed by another one. He never stopped drinking, despite all the advice given to him. He never listened. He had dozens of tablets washed down with a pint of beer. That was how he took medication. When I told him that I had won a place to run the London Marathon, he asked me what the chances were of my winning the race. Then, my mother chipped in. She asked about the prize money for winning the race. I bit my tongue and poured more beer into his half-empty glass. Sadly, that was the last conversation I had with him before he completely lost his mental capacity.
Then There Was Graham
Then there was Graham. He was much older than me and a regular participant in the weekend trail runs I led at the club. When my confidence in leading the group was getting shaky, he turned up at every single event with a smile and kept me company. As a Freedom Pass holder, he was absolutely enjoying the free travel in and out of London, running, cycling and hiking. He used to say, “Hisayo – You are not a slow runner. You overtook me at that hill in Davos Half, remember? You are fast and competitive!” Yes, I overtook him in the Swiss Alpine Half Marathon in Davos many years ago, and he never forgave me for doing it. He always made me laugh.
When I received a club email informing me of his sudden death from cancer, I couldn’t believe how fast the situation could change for a person of his age. It was less than 6 months ago that he was running with me. I didn’t know that he was ill. As it turned out, he did not know it either. At his funeral, the room overflowed with younger runners and cyclists who had known him as a strong and joyful friend. His legacy was not past glories, but a life lived actively to the end.
What Remains
I think of Graham when I think about my relationship with my father and the funeral for both men. When my father passed, not one person remembered or talked about his sporting days.
The Choice
For years, I thought these were two separate stories. My father, who could never see me. My father, who fell apart when he could no longer be the best.
There was only ever one rule in his world. Only the top counts. Everything else is nothing.
That rule is why he looked at his slow, clumsy daughter and saw Donald Duck. It is the same rule that broke him when his own body began to fail. He could not understand joy in my running for the very reason he could not bear his own ageing. Neither was winning anything. And a thing that was not winning was, to him, not worth doing at all.
I was raised inside that rule. I could have carried it out of that house and into the rest of my life. Plenty of people do.
No. I chose the other path.
In my sixth decade of life, I run faster and further than I did in my twenties. I also lift more weights than I believed my body could hold. I still have the same body that my father had written off before I had even begun.
I am by no means special, but I just never stopped. Age was never the thing that made him weak. Stopping was.
I still hear Graham on the hills sometimes. “You are not a slow runner, Hisayo. You overtook me at Davos, remember?” He was right. He was right about most of the things my father never understood.
Onward
This blog post marks a year of writing here. A year of turning my running, my lifting, and everything underneath them into words.
If there is one thing worth carrying into the next year, it is this. Medals fade. Records blur. Times are forgotten. Sports are not about what you achieve in your 20s, but how you live your life to the end. What matters is showing up, enjoying the movement, and sharing the road or the gym with others.
In the end, no one at the funeral counts your podiums. They remember whether you turned up. Whether you were there. Whether you kept moving beside them to the end.
My father showed me how not to grow old. Graham showed me how.
The road does not end here. There are more miles to run, more weights to lift, more of this to share.
Here’s to the year ahead. May we all keep showing up.