The people before you.

A letter about the people who came before you, the memories they gave us and the parts of them we carry forward. As I prepare to run the New York City Marathon for Alzheimer’s Society, I introduce you to your great-grandparents and explain why they’ll be with me every step of the way.

Dear Leo,

Last night, I sat inside the Royal Albert Hall listening to an orchestra play music from the Disney films I watched when I was little. I was there with your godfather Scott, or “Scotcheggs,” as you call him.

It was Disney Night at the BBC Proms, and as each familiar song began, I found myself thinking less about the films and more about the people I used to watch them with.

It’s strange how memory works. You think you’re remembering a film, but really, you’re remembering whose house you were in. Whose VHS player you pushed the tape into. Who sat beside you and how it felt to be there with them.

At my Grandma’s house, I remember watching The Fox and the Hound. At my Grandad Taff’s house, slightly away from the Disney theme, I can vividly remember watching Michael Flatley in Riverdance. I think he even bought me the VHS one Christmas. I was fascinated by it and watched it on a loop.

The Lion King wasn’t featured last night, but I found myself thinking about one of its most famous songs, The Circle of Life.

I must have heard it hundreds of times as a child, but I don’t think I understood what it meant then. 

I certainly do now.

Grandad Taff and Grandma were my grandparents. They are your great-grandparents. You come from them too. You may not have had the chance to know them as I did, but their lives are still connected to yours. Parts of them passed through my mum and dad, then through me, and now live in you.

That’s lineage.

It is the long line of people standing behind you, even when you cannot see them.

Or, to keep it Lion King-themed, when you look up at the stars, that’s all the men and women who came before you looking down from the sky.

Grandad Taff was my mum’s dad. His name was Tom Rees, and he grew up in a small Welsh village before joining the Royal Marines. He was a decorated soldier, an international athlete, and an artist. He rode a white horse called Pegasus. He was strong, brave and incredibly capable. For years, I was convinced I would follow in his footsteps and join the Royal Marines, just like him. When I raced through the Sahara Desert in the Marathon Des Sables, I had moments where the pain and discomfort became unbearable for me. I can remember looking up past the sand dunes, into the ridge line of caves and rocky outcrops and I started to think of my grandad who fought in battles in similar terrain at this. Back then, they wouldn't have had anything but discomfort and pain, but they got through it and probably without a single whinge. It was a necessary shift in perspective for me, that on several occasions powered me forward through the race. 

He was the man I wrestled with on the living-room floor. The man I watched rugby beside while he drank ale from the same handled pint mug. The man who painted beautiful pictures of horses and bought me Riverdance on VHS.

Grandma is my dad’s mum.

Her name is Christine Libbey, and she was a primary school teacher for 35 years. For a short while, she was even my teacher.

She had one of the most brilliant and curious minds I have ever known. She could read dozens of books in a week. Learning wasn’t something she had to do; it was just part of who she was.

Whenever I hear the squawk of a seagull, I am immediately transported back to being a little boy at her house. Living in London, you don’t hear too many seagulls, but you do sometimes. And it takes just one squawk and I’m there again.

Alzheimer’s has already taken Grandad Taff from us. I was 16 when he died. I watched this incredibly strong man slowly lose the connection between his body and his mind. His memories faded, his world became smaller and, eventually, his brain could no longer tell the muscles responsible for swallowing what to do.

Now the same disease is taking Grandma. She is living in its most advanced stages and no longer knows who any of us are. The woman who once filled her mind with hundreds of books can no longer recognise the people who helped fill the pages of her own life.

There is something especially cruel about watching a disease of the mind change two people who had such remarkable ones.

On the 1st of November, I’m going to run the New York City Marathon for them. I’ll run 42.2 kilometres through five boroughs of a city I barely know. But every step will be for two of the people who helped shape me, and, through me, helped shape you. I set myself the target of raising £25,000 for Alzheimer’s Society. When I chose that number, it felt extremely ambitious. Last week, though, we raised a little over £4,000.

Now I genuinely believe we can do it.

If we can continue with anything close to that momentum between now and race day, we may even go beyond it. I hope the money will help support families already living through this disease and fund the research that could mean fewer families have to experience it in the future.

But there is another reason I’m doing this.

Having watched Alzheimer’s affect both sides of our family, I sometimes wonder whether it will come for me one day. And that thought frightens me.

Perhaps that fear is part of the reason I train, read and write. Why I try to look after my body and keep my mind active. Why I pay such close attention to our time together and write these letters to you each week.

I’m scared that one day I might forget. But I don’t want to sit still with that fear. I want to turn it into something useful. So I will run. I will raise whatever money I can. And I will keep writing down the stories of the people who came before us.

One day, I hope you will tell someone about your great-grandad Taff, the brave Welsh Royal Marine who rode a white horse called Pegasus. I hope you will tell them about your great-grandma Christine, the teacher who could read dozens of books in a week, and why the sound of a seagull always made your dad stop and listen.

Perhaps you will even tell them about me.

That is the circle of life, as I understand it now. The people who came before us shape who we become. We carry parts of them through our own lives before passing those parts on to the people who come next. Alzheimer’s can take away someone’s memories. But it cannot take away their place in our family.

Grandad Taff and Grandma were my grandparents.

They are your great-grandparents.

And you are part of their story continuing.

Always, 

Love Dad x

P.S If you would like to support by donating to my JustGiving page, any contribution would be gratefully received. The link is HERE - thank you so much.