We are a mother and son team running the Brighton Marathon on 14th April 2019 in memory of Sophie Haydon. Sophie was our mother & grandmother and when she died last year she was only a few months short of her 93rd birthday.
For the last few years she suffered from vascular dementia, she had good days and days when the disease got the better of her. George was in Australia when she died but the last he saw her just before he left for that adventure. At lunch on that day, Sophie sang "Happy Birthday" as a solo and surprised us all by saying that when she was a child she had taken ballet lessons in the very restaurant where we were having lunch. In Sophie’s lifetime she had many exciting travelling adventures, she lived abroad in Africa & Hong Kong for many years, bringing up four daughters. For the past few decades what she enjoyed most of all was living in the countryside of her beloved Devon, the county in which she was born. Sophie was lucky enough to live at home until the last month before her death, but she could not have done that without the support of carers.
Dementia UK’s Admiral Nurses provide specialist dementia support for families and we are running the Brighton Marathon to raise funds for this vital support to families.
As we write this, our combined ages add up to 93, so it is particularly poignant to run as mother and son in memory of our mother and grandmother. Please donate whatever you can, any help is appreciated!