my mom

even though this is getting posted after midnight it’s still may 6th in some time zones so whatever

anyway the point is my mom would be turning 56.

i’m here to tell her story, good times and bad. this is going to be long, unedited, and uncensored, but it is something i feel like i need to just let free and put out there. she was one of the most social people i have ever known. it’s what she would want.

one or two segments in this story may border on triggering. i’ll put dashes before and after those segments so you can skip them if you wish or if you need to. if anything else bothers you, let me know so i can warn people accordingly. this is an emotional story: it is entirely likely you will cry.

without further ado,

the story of Deborah Jo Stanley Burton.

my mother was born Deborah Jo Stanley on may 6th, 1955 to Bobby Joe Stanley and Mattie Mae Moser Stanley in the mountains of North Carolina. she would eventually become the oldest of three: Deborah (usually shortened to Debbie), Cathy, and Michael. she was usually the leader of the pack; a trait that became necessary once her parents got divorced in 1968, when she was 13. her father, Bobby Joe, mysteriously died in Ohio that same year. to this day, no one really knows the story. Mattie Mae remarried Floyd Morton and had one last child: Tracy. but this is Debbie’s story.

these two pictures are two of the earliest pictures i could find of her. the first one is from elementary school, i presume, and the second is from high school.

she never finished high school, but she got her GED and got into college. she transferred once or twice but she never finished her degree. during college, she married a military man named Steve. the marriage did not last, and they divorced on good terms.

after that divorce, she ended up dating a man she met at a party Steve had taken her to. that man she met is my father, Roger Dale Burton, Sr. however, he wasn’t a Sr. at the time. they married in the 80s after my father graduated from East Carolina and moved to Kernersville, NC together.

she loved the ocean. any opportunity she could get to see it, she did. she spent a lot of time at the beach house she bought with my dad in Atlantic Beach, NC.

eventually, her and my dad decided it was time to have a child. they tried, but she miscarried late in the pregnancy. was the second time the charm? no. she miscarried again, once again late in the pregnancy. she fell into a deep bout of depression because of these two failed attempts to have a child, so my dad got her a dog to help cheer her up. that dog was Barney, and he was her dog more than anything. he was protective of her, to a fault.

Barney helped get her spirits up enough to try having a child again. in late 1991, she got pregnant. in 1992, she was still carrying the baby just fine, but one day she was about to go with my father to take Barney for a walk. before she started, she began to spot (bleed “down there”) so she stayed back, worried. my dad went on. as it was spring, the trees were growing acorns which would fall without warning and knock you in the head. my dad heard one fall while he walked, and he ducked and managed to catch it behind his back. he took the acorn back to my mom and told her what happened. “this is a sign,” he said. “a sign that everything is going to be okay.”

and it was.

this is a picture of my mom, my grandma (who will always be Grandmother to me), and myself. you can’t see me, but trust me: i’m there.

my mom celebrated her 37th birthday on may 6, 1992. two weeks later, i was born. she called me the best belated birthday present anyone could ever ask for.

she quit her job working with my dad at the IRS so she could focus on taking care of me. since i was an only child and since i didn’t go to daycare, i didn’t have a lot of experience with other kids. but she didn’t want to lose me, so i can’t blame her.

she loved me with absolutely everything in her heart. when molly came into our lives, she loved her just as much. she loved my dad, too. all she did was love. she gave so much of it to everyone she ever met. i hear people talk of her now: her radiant smile, her beautiful hair, her stunning eyes, the way she lit a room up by walking into it. she put everything into her life.

she wanted me to go to a private school so i could remain safe. it lasted a year.

she loved watching me grow up. she loved to be around me. we went to seattle and hawaii with my dad in summer of ‘98; she loved that too. she kept on loving and loving and loving.

but then, something happened.

her and my father separated. she couldn’t love him any more. but she did anyway, no matter how much it hurt her.

——————————————-

i’m still not sure exactly why they separated. my mother later told me stories involving my dad hitting her, but it’s extremely hard to imagine him doing that, especially to someone like her. i don’t remember witnessing any incidents myself, but i do remember some times when the yelling got a little too loud.

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the divorce became final on april 1, 2001. the rules were as follows: my mother got me during the week, and i got to spend time with my dad on weekends. he bounced around from place to place after moving out. first with my uncle, then with his high school friend Gene, and then he moved in with mary.

if i had to pick a reason why everything went wrong, i pick mary. my dad was seeing her before the divorce was final, which still hurts my heart. it hurt my mom, too. for once, she found someone she could not love.

she had no sympathy for mary.

my mom, molly, and i bounced from an apartment to a big, ugly, white house, and finally we ended up in a condo. i was in sixth grade by this point; it was 2003 or 2004. my dad was still with mary, and my mom had been trying for years to get a steady job and failing.

what was her passion was painting. she loved art. she would paint the walls of the house, drawing flowers around the bed, and drawing leaves on a wall lamp cord that ran down the side of the wall. however, she could never find anyone to buy her art nor could she find anyone to commission her.

she resorted to asking my dad for money. it came, but it didn’t come often, and times were often hard for us. thanksgiving dinner one year was strawberry oatmeal and tangerine slices. but it was with my mom, so it was okay.

she didn’t start dating again for a while. around the time we moved into the condo, she had started seeing an older man named Craig. i met him a few times; he was alright, but  i couldn’t ever imagine calling him dad. she spent time with him every now and then, i stayed at home alone, usually.

in 2004, things began to turn. she still loved my father, but he didn’t love her. whenever they would see each other, things would be tense, and there would often be yelling. she turned to alcohol to combat her depression; usually it was either a bottle of wine or Bud Light.

more than once, i can remember locking my bedroom door in fear as my mother drunkenly banged on it, blaming me for not telling her about mary earlier and blaming me for the divorce. even though i knew that she didn’t mean what she was saying, it still hurt to hear it.

one night, things permanently took a turn for the worse. she was walking around in the middle of the night, probably to go use the bathroom, and out of nowhere i hear a sudden crash. i jump out of bed and go to see what happened. she appeared to have tripped on the vacuum cleaner and had fallen. there was a wound on her head. i washed it and bandaged it up and we both went back to bed.

things were never the same.

she started making increasingly irrational decisions. she would stay out for longer and for more ambiguous reasons. she would tell me she was leaving to go get “a BC Powder and a Diet Coke” and not be back for hours.

she got in a wreck near our home one day; a bad one. but she didn’t exchange insurance with the person she hit. she began to walk away. when the person she hit started yelling at her, she ran. she ran all the way home and, when she got back to the house, pretended nothing was wrong.

i stopped believing her when the police started banging on the door. she was in hysterics because she claimed the officer was going to shoot Molly. she ran out the door and broke into a condo across the street, getting a wooden rod and attacking the officer. eventually, she got subdued and was taken away in a police car. i watched the whole thing unfold, along with the rest of the neighborhood. my dad was in Chicago on business at the time. he flew back the next day. i spent the night with my uncle.

my mother didn’t go to jail for what she did. she went to a mental hospital instead for one month of treatment. molly and i stayed with my dad that one month. i only got to visit her once; the facility was over an hour away. after i left, i could only think of one thing.

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my mother is in an insane asylum.

as i traversed the halls with my dad, i heard screaming and i saw people being wheeled around in straitjackets. when i finally got to visit my mom, she was all smiles, but when we had a private chat, she dropped the front and told me how horrifying everything was. she told me about how they wouldn’t feed her and how she had to eat a cockroach one night. she told me about how one of the other patients snuck into her room one night and broke her toe. she told me to get her out of there.

i couldn’t do anything, though. i was twelve. all i could do was hug her and tell her i loved her. that seemed to be enough.

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at the end of the month, she came back and everything seemed to be fine. she celebrated her 50th birthday on may 6, 2005.

we celebrated my 13th on may 20th, 2005. when i got home from school, she had cooked my favorite chicken stir-fry and there was a note on my door. it read, and i will remember it until the day i die,

“Roger Dale,

Happy 13th birthday!

I love you so much

and I am so proud of you

Love, Mom”

i still have that note, somewhere

in the couple of weeks after that, though, things started to regress. she began to disappear more often and for longer stretches of time than before. she began to make irrational decisions again. she wasn’t the same person who was full of love. she wasn’t the same person whose favorite song was Look What You’ve Done by Jet. she wasn’t the same person she used to be.

on June 9th, 2005, my mother and i had the following exchange:

“I’m going to BP to get some BC Powder and a Diet Coke. Be back in a little while.”

“Okay, Mom.”

i don’t know how long “a little while” is supposed to be. but one hour, two hours, three hours passed. after three hours, a knock came at my door. it was my dad. naturally, him showing up surprised me. he asked me if i knew where mom was. i told him i didn’t know. i could tell he knew.

“Son, Mom’s been in an accident.”

“Oh my god, is she okay?”

…

“She’s…dead.”

it hit me like a brick wall. there was about five seconds of silence after those two words, broken by Molly’s paws clacking on the hardwood. my mouth just hung open. i didn’t know what to do. neither did my dad.

“Do you want to go get some food?” he suggested

i silently nodded my head and we met my uncle Donnie and cousin Jessica at Logan’s Roadhouse. i was still silent, but i was coping. i was shocked, but not surprised. living with her, i noticed the downward spiral she was going through. but when it finally hit, it hurt all the same.

the aforementioned accident is something with which we will never know the details. they found her under an overpass on I-40. she had died from a fall. her truck was parked on one side of the overpass; it was apparently out of gas. she was probably walking to the BP on the other side of the overpass to get some gas, and maybe a car came too close and spooked her and she fell off.

———————

that’s what i believe happened. some asshole at my school started a rumor that she committed suicide, which made me as mad as i’ve ever been. we don’t know if it was suicide, and we’ll never know. but she didn’t leave a note and she didn’t tell me goodbye so i don’t think it was. but, as i said, we’ll never know. i believe what i believe, though.

———————-

the funeral was a couple of weeks after. Grandmother was in hysterics; i’ve never heard such loud crying. my uncle Michael flew in from California where he lives. everyone from my mom’s side of the family was there. so was my dad. he was racked with tears, and he could barely read a short speech he had written. that remains the only time i have ever seen my father cry.

i didn’t cry. i think it was because i wanted to remain strong.

she was cremated as it stated in her will and my father and i took the share of ashes we got to her favorite pier in Atlantic Beach, NC. we spread her ashes out in the ocean, my dad threw his wedding band in, and i read her favorite psalm.

flash forward to april of 2006. my eighth grade class went on a field trip to the beach. not Atlantic Beach, but Wilmington. we were going to go take a tour of a battleship and go to an aquarium. between those two stops, we took a rest break at a pier. it was the first time i had been to the ocean since i spread her ashes.

i walked along the edge of the pier and stared off into the distance. i looked down at the ocean and felt myself starting to tear up. i felt two hands on my shoulders. i turned and saw two of my closest friends, Jordan and Meaghan. they were happy to be there for me, so i sucked up my tears and carried on.

as the buses started to load, something…happened to me. i turned to DeShawn and said, “I have to run.” and i started running. Dish says he’d never seen me like that, and he doubts he ever will again. but i ran. i ran, tears streaking down my face. i ran past Mr. Russillo, who tried to stop me but couldn’t. i ran past everyone, to the edge of the pier. the tears i had refused to cry before were pouring out now. it was as close to a grave as i could get.

i looked over the edge and whispered some of the lyrics from Pink Floyd’s Mother:

Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry

Mama’s gonna make all your nightmares come true

Mama’s gonna put all of her fears into you

Mama’s gonna keep your right here

Under her wing

She won’t let you fly

But she might let you sing

Mama’s gonna keep baby cozy and warm

i wiped the tears from my face and looked back down the pier. she’d want me to have fun, i thought. i can’t turn my back on my friends, i thought.

i walked down the pier, back to the field trip group. Mr. Russillo asked me politely if i needed more time. i looked at all my smiling friends, and i knew that there was no place i would rather be. i smiled at Mr. Russillo and said, “i think i’m alright.”

i’m alright because, even though she’s not with me today, i was blessed with a wonderful mother for 13 years. i’m alright because i live my life the way i know she would want me to. i’m alright because i strive to make this world one she would love to live in. i’m alright because, when i have kids, i will be able to look down and see my mother’s eyes.

rest in peace, Mom. i will always love you. a lot of things have changed, are changing, and will change about me, but that won’t. i will love you forever.