How Do You Take Your Coffee?

Even when my dad’s Alzheimer’s was progressing like a boss, he continued to prepare a breakfast tray for his ‘wife’ and deliver it to her in bed, each morning around eight. I put wife in inverted commas because they never actually got married but they referred to each other in the correct spousal terms. This was my dad’s third wife. All three had sing-song, three-syllabled names ending in a cheerful ee. My mum was the first wife. And the best. Felicity.

The breakfast tray continued as did many daily habits, but it was always going to be a tricky game of remember-what’s-on-the-tray. In time, the boiled egg came without a spoon. Or with the spoon came and without the egg. Only the egg cup. As far as I know, the egg was always cooked. But one thing remained a stalwart, the mini Bodum of coffee, freshly brewed, piping hot.

Everyone loves their morning cuppa, eh? The H was reading an article out to me the other day. “The Top Reasons For Divorce”. The info was drawn from a bunch of divorce lawyers. Where are you reading that?! I asked (and why, more to the point.) One dude’s reason for divorcing his wife was that she asked him each morning how he took his coffee. For a long, no doubt crap-morning-cuppa-filled, seven years. I know there’s a minefield of milks around these days but it can’t be that hard. Bovine. Almond. Oat. Soy. Coconut. Rice. Macadamia. Warmed. A splash. Half and half. Black.

One time, I went to look after dad while his ‘wife’ (we’ll call her Verity) went away for a well-earned holiday. Dad still prepared her elaborate breakfast tray by 8 am. Each morning as I appeared in their sunny kitchen, Dad looked at me with curious eyes, as though freshly arrived. Verity’s away I reminded him. I’m here looking after you, Dad. 

Oh yes, so you are, he’d say.

After breakfast, I go with him on his first walk of the day. We’d ambled east along the Pohutukawa-edged clifftop with the sea green-blue and glistening in the background. Then inland passed houses and back home via Penguin Place. Dad’s cat came with us. We walked as slowly as a three-legged tortoise. Stopping to listen to Tuis or if a car approached to herd SmudgeBum the cat into the safety of the gutter until it had passed. Miraculously that cat was never run over. 

But not long after my stay, dad fell off the cliff in front of his house. How he didn’t die instantly is a miracle. He was throwing over some leaf litter he’d collected. Being a gardener from way back there were probably a couple of weeds in his clutch too. He managed to slip down a wide clay crack, between tree roots and land on a rock ledge above the tide. He knocked himself unconscious, didn’t remember a thing, and never once complained of the pain of his injuries. He dragged the local volunteer fire brigade from their dinner, won a ride in a Westpac rescue helicopter, and had his escapade noted in the New Zealand Herald. He also won a seven week stay in North Shore hospital's geriatric ward. And a one-way ticket to a rest home.

I ate expensive deli sandwiches with dad in the ward’s day room, telling him we were in a café. Are we the only table? he’d asked. Fraught family meetings were held in that room when deciding on Dad’s next move, once his ribs, neck vertebra, concussion, and lacerations had healed sufficiently. At the first meeting, I suggested he and Verity move into a villa in an aged care residential whatnot, so they could stay living together. That went down like a tonne of ammonium nitrate under the sky tower. He had become a liability. Verity could no longer cope. No extra carers had ever been employed to take the load off. Most of his wanderings off up to the village to check the post box at the store several times a day were safe. Until they weren’t. He was a familiar sight. His white hair, browning above his ears because he refused to shower. His corduroys smelling of urine and losing their pile around his fly because of it. Try telling any old dude he needs Poise-for-boys or adult diapers then ensure he wears them. It’s a fragile line between dignity and loss of freedoms. Independence. 

The hospital aged care facilitator did some basic life-skills-test with dad in that room. What the fuck they were supposed to achieve I do not know. Dexterity: 8/10. Dad’s results basically dictated that he’d never set foot in his seaside home again. One test was making coffee. Dad failed. The facilitator told me, he put a heaped dessert spoonful of coffee into the mug! She scoffed as though he was clearly deranged. I told her right back, that’s because he and Verity don’t drink instant coffee. He thought he was making real coffee, with fresh grounds. In a mini Bodum. He just got the vessel mixed up. She was not impressed. Her Moccona clearly had lost its Mmmmm. 

Dad was always a creature of habit. In his working life in London, he wore Church’s brown brogues. He had two pairs which he wore on alternate days. I was never quite sure why he didn’t just wear one pair out and then buy a new pair. It’s like driving a car way below the empty mark to save petrol. Many of his shoe rituals probably started when he was a naval officer in New Zealand. One of the most vivid memories of my childhood was dad sitting on the edge of the parental bed tugging on his long white naval socks. Firstly, he would pepper in between his toes with athlete’s foot powder. Next, came these white, inside-out sock snakes. He would peel them on over his feet and up his calves. Tanned despite the sock-wearing. A thick rubber band, hidden by a wide turndown, held the socks in place just under the knee. The shoes were white also. Sort of white-washed leather. Strange that my father wore white shoes without realising their possible nuances; he was a major homophobe. At the same age, my future husband’s mother was warning him to never trust men in white shoes. We grew up with a lot of ignorant schizz in the 70s.

 

I saw my dad in the nude once. I was both mortified and impressed by the size of his (what I later found out when mum read my sister and me a small green book titled Where Do Babies Come From) was his penis. I think at the time I thought it was some form of mini elephant trunk. A trouser snake. I might have smiled.

Once we were playing tennis in Malaysia, back when my dad had a job at the New Zealand High Commission in Singapore. Dad was a wasp magnet and highly allergic to them. He was getting hassled by a thirsty bunch of vespas. He hopped about the court, waving his tennis racket in defense. I helpfully yelled out, Dad, Dad you look like a fairy! He blew his top. I was hurt and confused, only thinking that what looked like playful antics required a compliment. His outburst probably coincided with the exact time that he was stung. Several times. Right above his eye, which blew up like a prize fighter’s post pummelling. My mother had to administer whiskies and water back in their hotel room. Later the kitchen provided a raw steak to draw out the sting. Not long after that, my parents divorced. It was nothing to do with coffee. Or milk. But another woman. My godmother.

But that’s another story. 

If there is a moral to this tale it would be – learn how to make your partner’s morning brew. Make it with love. Make it good.

Jane xo

How To Write A Eulogy - Or Not

The last thing I wrote
with a beginning
a middle
and an end
was my Dad's eulogy

-->

It’s not easy to put 84 years off life into a few minutes. But I can offer some personal snippets of Dad’s life.

When we were children I remember going to stay with Nana and Tapu, or Ethel and Stephen Waymouth, Dad’s parents, at the vicarage in Puketapu. It was a big white and grey wooden villa set in big trees with the small wooden Anglican church (much like this) nearby. Belinda and I slept on camp stretchers in Tapu’s study. I woke in the morning and through my bleary child’s eyes, I thought I saw something on Tapu’s desk, which could only be Jesus’s poo. Him being a man of god it seemed pretty obvious. I was convinced, but no one at school believed me when I told them. It was probably tobacco. Tapu smoked a pipe. And so did Dad, until the price of tobacco went up to $15 a packet and he quit on principle. 

Dad was in the Navy for 15 years. Towards the end of his naval career, he took up the position of Defense Liaison Attaché at the New Zealand High Commission in Singapore. We packed up our family home in Bayswater, Auckland, and set off. Belinda (sister) and I thought we’d died and turned into princesses aged 6 and 5 when we arrived at the huge high commission house. To us, it looked like a palace. It did come with staff. The lovely cook, Chin Foo whose peanut brownies you could eat raw and who only wore his false teeth if we had guests. The chauffeur Maui, who drove Dad to the High Commission each day. The amah who watched raucous Chinese soaps on TV while Belinda and I skated along the wooden corridors in socks. Often gathering painful splinters. Or turned our large tiled bathroom into a soap-slide when Mum and Dad were out at cocktail parties.

Dad was always keen to explore new places. We’d head off in his white Rover 3500 (imported duty-free from the UK), to Kuala Lumpur or Malacca, Malaysia. There was a customs officer at passport control on the causeway into Malaysia who always chatted to Dad. Because Dad shared the same birthdate as Prince Charles and the officer thought they looked alike. Thought he was his doppelgänger. Maybe - but I thought Dad was more handsome, with better ears.

Belinda and I returned home to New Zealand with our mother around about a year into the three-year posting. We got teased mercilessly at school because our blonde hair had turned green from the chlorine at The Tanglin Club pool and we’d picked up British accents from our school. Dad remarried and so did our mother. We soon had two sets of parents. We missed Dad terribly and it took a while to adjust to this new arrangement. We kept in touch via aerogrammes and cassette tapes. Mum would make us fill a 30minute side each. The flipside for Belinda and I was the adventure of travelling overseas as unaccompanied minors to visit Dad during the holidays.

Dad stayed on in Singapore when he retired from the navy and worked for Vosper Thorneycroft, a military-oriented shipbuilding company. This was the start of his career in sales. In his later years, we would have quite in-depth conversations about things we’d never talked about before. One night a few years ago, he told me how he’d been ‘replaced’ at Vosper Thorneycroft by a guy from the airforce. “An American! What would he know about ships?!” said Dad. Let’s just say there were a few expletives involved in the telling of this story.

Dad’s work with Finance company Finexco took him to Paris, where 38 years ago he met his partner Hilary. At one point they had a posting to Nairobi. I went to stay with Dad there and was treated to some amazing trips into the Kenyan wilderness. Dad’s sturdy Mercedes managed most of these outback adventures on the rough potholed dirt roads amazingly well. On one trip to Lake Baringo, world renown for its pink ponds of flamingoes and pelicans, Dad was negotiating a partially flooded road leading up to the lodge. Two cars were already stuck. An askari ahead of us was indicating we drive through the left-hand puddle. Dad took the right. We got stuck and had to wait red-faced to be towed out. When Dad was having a cool beer to recover, half an hour later on the lodge veranda, I had to laugh at his choice of t-shirt that day. It read “Right or Wrong, I’m the Captain.”

I can thank Dad for a lot of things. A love of exploring the world. A love of birds. A love of the sea. Good table manners. Social etiquette. An appreciation of fine wine. Dad loved nothing more than a nice meal, a good red and lively discussion around the dinner table with friends and family. Especially if he was winning the argument. He was a man of principle and routine. He was a gentleman. He loved a sense of occasion. And always looked the part. He loved a fine motorcar. This probably started as a young naval officer at university when he drove around looking very dashing in a white jaguar soft-top sports car XJ120. He once lent his car to his mate Somerford, who was courting his future wife at the time. 

Dad was also an immensely proud intelligent man, so it was heartbreaking to watch the confusion and frustration when his mind began to slowly succumb to dementia. Although I felt very close to him during this time. I only looked after him for a few short spells to give Hilary a break, but I always found him good company. Very mellow, and always charming and polite and unlike most of his life he was actually quite obedient. Or happy for someone else to be in charge. His sense of humour remained intact and we often had a good laugh and the old Mike would reappear. We’d sit on the veranda, staring out to sea towards Great Barrier and Dad would say, ‘I wonder what the poor people are doing today?’

When I visited Dad in his rest home we’d enjoy a game of scrabble. Dad sometimes made up new words or switched to French. Or he’d floor me with a difficult word, showing his intellect was still intact. Some of the carers at the rest home would add words in Te Reo Maori when they played with him to keep him on his toes. Dad would occasionally come out with random one-liners. Some are used verbatim in my Lily Max children’s novels by the sweet, dementia-afflicted character, Tilda Button. I’m glad I’ll never forget them.

Gradually Dad became less aware of his surroundings but he remained mostly content. Often like the great host, he was he’d look about the dayroom and make a tally of how many were coming for lunch. Then worry he’d have enough wine for everyone. One day he said, out of the blue, “We’re happy here, we have a good group of friends …” I’ll finish here. Love you Dad.

My Nana Always Wore A Hat - a prose poem

My Nana wore a flapper-style wedding dress and carried an enormous bouquet when she got married. She loved parties and people, tennis and matching hats. Perfect for a vicars wife.

My Nana read interesting snippets out of the paper and took up dressmaking. She scrimped on material so there was always a patch over a seam in a poignant place like centre front.

My Nana was widowed young so she took up travelling. She collected crystal handbells and souvenir matchboxes from the cities she visited around the world. She’d appear like an over adorned Christmas tree at the end of each trip, beaming as she sauntered off the plane.

My Nana wore orangey-red lipstick and grew a bristly kiss. She bought a white Mini Clubman and rode the clutch like a fury to morning teas around the village. On the days the tar melted, she’d collect us for a swim in her towelling housecoat; you could hear her roar streets away.

My Nana loved a good suntan. Her lower legs came to look like her crocodile handbag. ‘Just doing the fronts today dear,’ she’d smile from her sun lounger, while wasps nibbled plums on the grass beside her in the Hawkes Bay heat.

My Nana had terrible bunions; it was surprising her feet could get into those rows of going-out shoes. Her bedroom was a treasure trove of handbags and water-colours and clip-on earrings. Her glass topped dresser held a black and white museum of memories.

My Nana kept her hair dye in the bathroom cupboard. She used, ‘Cha Cha Gray’ and mostly left it in too long so her hair turned a flattering mauve.  

My Nana tried to discourage my love of ponies. She said girls who rode horses ended up looking like them. She had a friend who looked like her pug dog. I could see her point. She also told me I was kind and could be a nurse when I grew up.

My Nana liked sherry. When I got my licence I’d drive up from Onga Onga to visit, she’d pour me a couple in her blood red crystal glasses, as we chatted in the drawing room. I’d be shickered by the time I left.

My Nana was never a great cook. But when she started making toad in the hole from sausages peeled off the bottom of her fridge, she went into a home. She complained Mr Witherton-Jones had terrible manners when he slurped his soup beside her, and she wasn’t staying long.

My Nana used to hold parties in her room and invite her favourite nurses. She always had a cask of Blenheimer under her sink. ‘It’s so refreshing,’ she’d say.

My Nana sometimes went missing. But she always wore a hat!

Exit Through The Rest Home

It’s pretty safe to say that when you qualify for secure-dementia-rest-home-care – you’re on a one-way ticket. You will not pass go. You will not collect two hundred …

You may have the odd game of Scrabble.

‘Is FOSH a word?’ asked Dad, placing it on the board.

‘It is now,’ I said.

FOSHIT.  FOSHIN HELL. FOSH. FOSH. FABULOUS FOSH. FOSH UP. FOSH DOWN. FOSHABLE. FOSH OFF. FOSH YOU. FOSH ME. FOSH THEM. FOSH ALL THAT CAREFUL PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT. WHAT A LOAD OF FUCKING FOSH.

It all is.

I hadn’t seen my Dad for a while. Not that he’d remember. But I did. A sad kind of guilt had been gnawing away at me. Another kind of mess had been keeping me away.

I knew it would happen one day ... I stopped my rental beside him on the driveway. He’d snuck out for his postprandial. His mop of white hair stood slightly wild in the wind - an Andy Warhol comb-over. His brown brogues wallpapered with different walks of clay. His black four pocketed bomber jacket zipped tight to the 16 degree day.

‘Hello Dad!’ I said, lifting my sunglasses and poking my face into the sun.

He looked. He looked hard. His brow furrowed. His face said it wanted to make the right reply but was damned if it could. He had no idea who I was.

‘Hello,’ he said, politely.

I parked and walked back to greet him with a daughterly kiss. I offered him my arm. He declined. It was good to see him out in the spring sun. Exercising.

‘Did you knot all that flax, Dad?’ I asked.

‘Yes! It grows too wide. Get’s in the way of the cars.’

I liked to think of the action of his hands twisting and knotting endless long flax fronds around the top fence wire. There aren’t many dexterous tasks when you move into a rest home. Everything is done for you. No teabags to get out of a box and place in a cup, or spoonful’s of coffee to scoop into a Bodum. Breakfast was always dad’s chore. All those carefully nurtured fine-motor-skills heading back to base zero, along with everything else.

 At the end of the drive, Dad halted. He looked up and down the road. And at each passing cars.

‘You going to hitch a ride to Auckland?’ I jested.

‘No,’ he said, staring quizzically at his rest home signage. ‘I’m sure it’s very nice. But I wouldn’t want to live there.’

We walked back up the drive and took up chairs in the dayroom. In a heady stench of urine. No one else seemed to notice. I checked my chair for dampness. Snores rattled nearby. Heads hung. Dad tapped his long fingers in time to Ravel’s Bolero blasting out from a TV, on the grubbied arm of his lazy boy.

Suzanne (name changed) appeared. She’d pounced on Dad earlier when we’d returned through the key padded door. ‘Hello YOU,’ she’d said. ‘I’m going to give you a kiss.’

‘That would be nice,’ Dad replied.

She’d promptly slapped one firmly behind his ear. A peck. A pucker. Bloody hell. I’d heard about rest home couples. Replacing the absent spouse. With someone new. Dad is still snowy-haired handsome.

‘She’s got the hots for you, Dad,’ I said. Hoping it was just was a random act of affection, but now Suzanne had plans to sit with dad. On his chair.

‘Move over or I’ll have to sit on your bush,’ Suzanne fussed.

Oh hell.

Luckily a carer appeared and got her settled. In another chair. Then leapt onto the balcony to prevent another resident taking a slash on the wooden deck. Dad took a Turkish Delight and struggled with its wrapper. The mulleted TV composer heralded in a Johann Strauss waltz.

I snuck out for supplies. And later took Dad back to my cabin at the motor camp for microwaved tomato, basil pesto and cream soup.

Dad commented on its spiciness and ate thin slices of brie and nibbles of ciabatta bread. He didn't mention my abode. We could have been anywhere.

We hoofed it to Brigit Jones’ Baby. Dad chose hockey pokey. He normally has chocolate. The cinema soon filled with elderly couples clutching parsnip crisps and glasses of pinot gris. Friday night at the flicks. Dad held my hand. We have similar paws. Lean. Veiny. Long fingers with deep nail beds. His hand was warm and smooth. Resting with mine on the seat between us. His grip didn’t change over the full two hours three minutes. My hand almost cramped. But I held on tight. In the dark.

Dad’s always been a hand holder. I thought to periods in my life I felt shy to hold his in public. In my twenties mostly. Thought we’d look like some sort of pervy older man with his young mistress. Dumb really. To shun that fatherly affection. I felt evil about it. Wished I could erase it. Now.

BJB is full of f’ing and blinding. And shafting. Dad laughed in all the right places. Along with all the couples around us. They probably got some later.

Dad got reheated dinner, a glass of Syrah and a pottle of pills.

I asked, ‘What are they all for?’

‘No idea,’ he replied and downed them in one. ‘I’ll go upstairs soon ... I'd like to move that painting in the corner.’ He pointed across the room. 'Put my ships there.'

It was 8.45pm. Someone had been in Dad’s bed. Maybe it was Suzanne. To kiss him goodnight. His biscuit tin was open and telltale Tim-Tam-Dark crumbs peppered his pillow. I brushed them off, put an escaped biscuit sitting like a frightened mouse on his nightstand, alongside his electric razor on recharge and his permanently-in-transit-navy-blue-toilet-bag, back in its Tupperware container and back on the tray table with its raffia basket of white seedless grapes, monogrammed Economists and an empty plastic water jug.

I changed the wall calendar from an appointment-less June to September. Wrote: Jane visited!!! Smiley face, love heart, smiling kiwi xxx on the correct squares. And kissed him goodnight.

Night night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite …

The next day it was wall-to-wall rain. I made ham and brie sandwiches, looking past the pink and beige caravans to the Whangateau estuary. The tide was in. Neat sets of four, crusts on, wrapped in creased brown paper. His and hers.

We set out for Goat Island in between showers. Escaping  Frida, whose glass eye was wonky. A sightless orb pointing. Up. She’d plopped it out into her hanky. A pirate polishing a cannonball. Ready. Aim. Fire.

Suzanne was quiet. She did not follow dad into the toilet and refuse to vacate as he peed like she’d done the night before. Thank FOSH.

We couldn’t even get out of the car. An impressive swell surged between the island and the headland. A shag managed to land in a cross-wind onto its woody basket of a nest.

‘Do you miss the sea?’ I asked Dad.

‘Ooh yes,’ he replied.

The salty old sea dog. Ex-naval commander. Lover of ships. The wild blue ocean. And the officers’ mess. Now rheumy-eyed and often wiping thick tears with a licked finger.

Back at Leigh harbour fishing boats sat in relative calm. No one fished off the wharf. A gannet dived, a hungry arrow. On to Matheson’s Bay. Perfect in any tide. We ate our sandwiches with the window down. Rain speckling the plastic door frame. Dad took a bite out of each one, rewrapped them and stuffed them in the glove box.

‘They’ll do for later.’

I fed mine to the seagulls. They put on an impressive show.

Dad read the road sign when we drove out. ‘So that was Matheson’s Bay.’

‘Yep. Perfect in any tide.’

Back at the ranch, it was lunchtime. We sat and chatted with Tim. About dogs. Tim’s canine companion was shut in his room. On a meatless diet. Geoffrey the white terrier has a skin condition.

Tim advised, ‘He’s my favourite person ... He is like a person to me …’ Then Tim unfolded his paper napkin on the window side of his plate, and with the stealth of a boarding school pupil on golden-syrup-steam-pudding-day he deftly arranged forkfuls of crusty gravy-oozing meaty pie into a neat square. Wrapped it swiftly and plunged it into the (quite fitting) left-hand pocket of his chinos.

I worried for seepage. Tim downed his bowlful of garish green jelly with soft orange sliced peaches, and announced, ‘Time for Geoffrey’s meat,’ and trotted out of the dining room.

I thought of dad's sandwiches, safely placed in the glove box … and wondered if I’d just leave them there.

For later.

(NB. All names have been changed for privacy reasons. The staff at Dad’s home are truly wonderful human beings. I thank them all).

Namaste, Cleaning Monitors

If you are the Cleaning Monitor in your home you might return your palace to its gleaming newly erected self once or twice a week. Lucky you. Or you may have a more erratic janitorial approach if preoccupied with other pressing matters like the care of an aging father, and delivering a book baby. All the while secretly hoping one of your slobby flatmates might suddenly recall where the vacuum cleaner lives –

Mrs Nilfisk

Behind the Blue Doors

Under-stair cupboard

Hallway.

And take charge. They don’t. So when the dust bunnies knit themselves a scarf along the skirting boards that would make Nom D proud you shriek in disgust. This place is a tip.

Instead of going skiing - because it’s another beautiful frosty morning in Queenstown and it snowed 5cms last night - you embark on a cleaning frenzy. You dust, you vacuum - with the pipe only like a crazy nesting woman. You use a whole can of Murray’s Cavalier Bremworth Dry Stain remover on the yellow blobs all over daughter 17’s once plush grey carpet, repeat three times while enjoying a chemical high. You mop the polished concrete floors. You scrub the dunnies. You fold washing and PUT IT AWAY.

Your lower arms and triceps ache. You perspire, kick off your slippers and strip to your merino singlet. Whoop whoop! Who needs to ponce about at the gym enveloped in Lulu lemon. Clean-yo-house is the latest craze-ercise. Tone those batwings and get yourself some satisfaction, Cleaning Monitors!

Talking of monitors, my 81 year old dad is the self-appointed recycling monitor at his rest home. I've watched him attack a cardboard wrapped mini fridge sized package with the zing of a child undressing presents on Christmas morning. And like that child, he has no care for contents. Only wrapping. Plastic is ferried to its rightful bin, followed by cardboard squares carefully cut with scissors to theirs.

His dexterity makes me proud. Still using his hands now he has no daily chores to attend. For 38 years he prepared his breakfast each morning, and delivered his partner a tray in bed. Latterly, the boiled egg may’ve been missing. Or the spoon. But the small Bodum of coffee was always made. Never broken. The few times I took his partner’s place and cared for Dad at home, the exact same tray was laid out for me.

The day before Dad was legging it down the drive when I drove up. He’d managed to push a chair over to a 1.5 metre, key-padded gate, reach over to the handle on the other side and release himself. I was proud again of his escapist spirit. His wanderlust. Incarceration be damned. The staff’s running a Breakout Sweepstake with another resident who’s memorised the gate code. So far the other guy’s winning. Come on Dad!

But it’s actually quite a dangerous pursuit for an old guy. Brittle bones, brain in a whirr, what with falling and all. Clearing the garden of magnolia seed heads and biffing them over the fence is a safer option.

‘You got a potato patch under those nails, Dad.’

It is the games of children now. The unwrapping. The giddy excitement of a chocolate biscuit. Ooh could I have another, a different one. A buttered scone and three lettered scrabble. Picking fluff off the carpet and pulling the curtains after lunch.

He made it all the way to the main road last month and headed north.  A frail leggy homing pigeon, shoulder sloping heavily to the left, a mop of badly trimmed white hair on a road to nowhere.  No prison stripes though. He’s sartorial almost in his camel corduroys, brown brogues, blue checked shirt, and soft green v-necked sweater. A similar shirt and sweater combo he insists on wearing under his pyjama top each night. Well, he is the Recycling Monitor.

Come Monday this Cleaning Monitor will be donning her Lulu lycra and heading to yoga. The dust bunnies can boil themselves into a rug of dog-hair-felt for all I care. This CM needs to restring some sinews; take her body through a meditation. Plank. Cobra. She’ll be downward doggy dogging it all the way to the best part. Shavasana. Then prostrate, eyes shut, hands on belly in simple silence. For a moment – a five minute moment – she’ll be somewhere else …

She’s in a bare apple tree on a sunny winter’s morning. She’s a baby bird sitting on a branch. An old tui clambers in and drinks sugar water. Then a bellbird. A waxeye. A tomtit. A yellow eye. It’s Noah’s flippin aviary arc in that tree. Sound comes. It could be whale music, it’s calming. No, it’s birdsong - lobble lobble lobble click scrick click. And feathers on feather. Scriffle scruffle. The air is crisp. She breaths it down. Squinting now, the sun burrows into her irises. Warms her wings. A heat she wishes north … 

She'll recall a conversation.

He says, ‘It’s wall to wall rain up here.’

‘The grey makes you feel gloomy doesn’t it.’

‘Yes, there is a certain sort of feeling like that on top of it.’

... But her sky radiates royal blue. The best colour. It covers the land ...

Losing Our Minds

It’s feels like running downhill full tilt as a child when you leave the high energy of a Writers & Readers Festival then begin a three day father-sit, only your untrained young legs do not brake you at the bottom of the grassy slope, so you fall with outstretched hands. FOOSH. Into the nettle patch below. Not that my Dad is prickly he is completely mellow in the world that is now his. Dementia is a bastard and I hope I don’t get it. It looks lonely and confusing when you’re on the outside looking in.

I’ve read somewhere that it’s not necessarily hereditary.

However, while I’m caring for my Dad I eat fish twice a day and do more aerobic exercise than I’ve done since I attended Les Mills in a nasty turquoise leotard (which was actually a pair of togs) and attempted a do the grape-vine to Everybody-Dance-Now. Jazzergetics aside getting your heart rate up and over resting 3 times a week along with turmeric, kale, cinnamon and omega 3 are my Alzheimer preventatives du jour.

Dad’s house sits on the edge of a cliff over Leigh harbour bordered by neatly trimmed paspalum grass on a pohutakawa edged reserve. A series of steps and scoria filled boardwalks drop to the left through a steep gulley lush with native bush and chirpy tuis. I do-the-stairs first thing while Dad does his solitary walk to the store to buy the Herald.

I like running incognito, under the calm canopy of karaka leaves. I fold my arms under my boobs by way of a sports bra and run up then walk down. Three sets, increased daily to six by the third day. Back and forth back and forth. When I’m sweaty and barely breathing I dash home, change into my togs and drive to the beach for a salty dip. The cool down is instant and pleasant. Body parts do not numb. I do a Nana swim with my head above water. Breaststroke up and back-kicking on the return. It’s mid-May and winter after all.

Over three days Dad and I fall into an easy silence, reading together on the verandah. I look out regularly towards little Barrier (whose silhouette looks like Queen Victoria in repose if you look closely). Dad focuses on the latest printed murder and mayhem, tutting and sighing at the good bits.

Every morning he sets off on his second walk to check the post box. Sometimes he buys the newspaper again. I tag along uninvited. His is a solitary routine. I slow my pace to his, by folding my hands behind my back, taking staggered steps and bird watching.

Dad shuffles more than six months ago, more stooped, scuffing the toes of his worn out boat shoes, his legs a deep tan his feet sockless. It doesn’t feel that long ago that I was the child running after his striding 6ft 2 frame crying,  ‘Dad wait for me, wait for me.’ The song Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast ringing in my ears. Even though we’re now 80 and 50 apiece.

Back home we sit in the sun and read some more.

‘I wonder what the poor people are doing today,’ says Dad, staring out to sea.

‘Where did that saying come from?’ I ask, but he doesn’t remember.

Dementia is akin to losing small parts of a person little by little. Though it can be surprising what histories are still sharp. I brought a pile of old photos to jog his memory into conversations about my childhood. I showed too many. I’ll never do it again. The images were obviously confusing. Some sort of test. He did perk up over a photo of a cat. He’s always loved cats.

Afterwards he said, ‘Do you have any grandchildren yet?’

‘Not yet Dad,’ I said. (My children are 11, 13 & 15).

In the evenings as Dad sat on the sofa and read and re-read, I’d prepare dinner. Used to a noisy household I found the void deafening. I didn’t want him to hear me slosh gin into a glass then the grinch of the screw top as I added tonic so I put on some music. In Classical Mood – Reflections seemed apt.

‘Oh it’s Bach in a g-string,’ noted Dad reading, from the cd cover.

Go Bach.  I was thrilled to hear him hum occasionally and see him tap his long fingers on the sofa arm. At one point he rotated both ankles like you might on a long distance flight. Sofa dancing.

I finished US author A Homes’, May We Be Forgiven sitting beside Dad on the next glorious 18 degree day. Tuis warbled and solo gannets buzz the cliff tops. In this book Harold the protagonist collects an assortment of people into his family when he’s charged with the care of his brother’s children after the murder of their mother (by their father btw). These people become his knew family as he and the children try to come to grips with their situation. An elderly couple, Cy and Madeline are part of the motley-crew when their daughter abandons them.

On the page Cy and Madeline are easy care, they’re funny and cute with great one liners. You cannot smell their old person smell, nor see their unwashed white hair turn from yellow to dirt brown. If they pee with the door open throughout the day it doesn’t say. Cy no doubt has long spidery hairs growing from his ears and nose and eyebrows but Homes keeps stum on that too. If only being elderly was like that - the sad lonely frustrating bits edited out.

It would have been simpler to let Dad go about his business on his own. To be hurt and offended by not being included. But I’m the grown up now. I butt in. Organize. Make chat.

On the last night I take him out to dinner. Dad loves an occasion. He goes to take a shower and change his shirt.The door of the upstairs bathroom is left ajar. The water runs, the shower door opens. He’s talking to himself again. He can’t find his towel. Clatter of door. Mumble mumble.

‘Ohhh fuck it,’ he says.

It’s the first time I’ve EVER heard my Dad use the f-word. I sit in his cream armchair beside his table with its reading lamp, his little green diary littered with odd random pencil scribbles and his pile of Economists and I smile really hoping it’s not the last. 

(Statistics: In 2010, 35.6 million people had dementia worldwide, that number is estimated to nearly double every 20 years.)