Rhys Loring

What inspired you to get involved in the Alzheimer’s Association?

July 4^th, 2010 was a day of dual independence for my family, as it was not only a celebration of independence for our country, but it was also the day that my grandfather was finally independent from Alzheimer’s disease, having died silently in his sleep early that morning.

What can you tell us about your grandfather before dementia?

My grandfather, Mahlon “Bill” Adams, was born in a small town in Kansas in 1928 and grew up the third of four boys.  Having grown up with no sisters, he had four daughters of his own and no sons.  Of those four daughters, they all bore my grandfather grandsons, with the exception of one girl: me.  Growing up as the only granddaughter automatically forged a very special bond between Papa and me.  He was a cabinet builder, and he would often build me things as presents.  One year he built me an amazing dollhouse (that I still have), and another time he built me a broomstick horse that he decided should be named Plug. 

Always the jokester, he actually earned his nickname Bill after Wild Bill Hickock because of the pranks he was always pulling.  As a child I had a favorite blankie that he would always steal from me, and then he would shuffle off and snicker over our game while I cried for him to give it back.  If I was touching my grandma, I was on “safe base” and he had to release my blanket from his possession.  After several years of this, I finally got fed up and took out a pair of scissors and cut him a small square and said, “Here!  Now you have your own and don’t need to steal mine!”  A bit dumbfounded by my cleverness and vivacity, he promptly pulled out his wallet and secured the square in a picture sleeve inside and he carried it around with him ever after.   

Once your grandfather was diagnosed, how did it affect you?

When my grandfather was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I was frankly in denial.  In the early parts of his journey with the disease I was away at college, and I was more selfishly focused on living out my last days as a kid before entering the real world than I was about my grandfather.  Then, a year after I graduated I moved across the country to New York, putting even more distance – both literally and figuratively – between myself and Papa’s ever-declining health.  When my mom would call and update me on what was going on with him, I was either too busy living my life to fully grasp what was going on, or was just too scared to try to understand.

Things really hit me hard in his last year as I learned of his various stages of decline: he couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time and had an accident, he couldn’t dress himself anymore, he was losing excessive amounts of weight, he was sleeping all the time.  Hearing all of these things finally woke me up as to what was happening and not a day went by that I didn’t cry, because I knew the man I had known and loved was no longer, and I felt that seeing him in such a fragile state face-to-face would tarnish all the strong and wonderful memories I had of him.

Why do you participate?

Unfortunately when Papa reached the obsessive counting and organizing phase that is common as patients lose their memory, the little blankie swatch I had given him got lost. 

Fast forward to the summer of 2012… I was about to get married, which is of course a very exciting thing, but the fact that Papa never got to meet my future husband was still weighing on me.  I had planned to wear my grandmother’s wedding earrings and I went upstairs at my parents’ house to get them out.  In a box they were tucked next to a card that I had not remembered ever having seen.  I opened it, and it was a note my Papa had written me ten years earlier, with a piece of his square of the blankie pinned to it.  As I started reading the note that told of how he would always be with me as long as I had half of his blanket square, I couldn’t help but feel he was speaking those words right there in front of me for the very first time.  And THAT is why I participate.

Rhys Loring is a Team Brunette veteran player who was unable to return for the 2013 season due to injury. She continues her participation through the Steering Committee.