“D.T. was a better person than he was a player, and he was a Hall of Fame player. That tells you how good of a person he was,” said Peyton Manning. “He treated my kids like they were his own. He was there for every teammate’s charity event.”
I was heartbroken to hear the news that Demaryius Thomas, a former professional football player, mostly known for his time with the Denver Broncos, passed yesterday at the age of 33. It is believed that Thomas died while having a seizure in the shower. This is a fear that any of us who love people with seizure disorders, deal with every single day. My son once had a seizure in the shower. I remember my husband ripping off the locked bathroom door that day, as if he were the Incredible Hulk. Any time anyone tragically dies of circumstances related to seizures, it is like a giant gut punch to me and to my family. It makes the gravity of my son’s epilepsy all the more real and visceral to me, but yet like a moth to a flame, I need to know more. I need to understand what happened in these various stories. I think that I am always trying to understand “the whys” and “the hows”, even though this is usually a lesson in futility. Usually “the whys” about anything that happens, often remain a mystery, and yet it is our human tendency to waste a lot of time on “the whys” about anything. The most repeated answer is usually nothing more than “just because.” Let it be. I have to remind myself, again and again, that I am not in control.
I spent a lot of time yesterday reading the stories about Demaryius Thomas. By all accounts he was a wonderful, stand-up man. When he was 11, Demaryius’ mother and grandmother were incarcerated for drug trafficking and they remained in jail for around twenty years. Demaryius was raised by his aunt and uncle. He became singularly focused on becoming an excellent football player and by many accounts, he ended up being one of the greatest receivers to play the game of football. In 2015, Demaryius wrote this wonderful blog post entitled “For Mama” for The Players’ Tribune. Here is an excerpt:
“No amount of money, no amount of fame, no amount of anything in the world can replace your mother. I realized that holding it all in wasn’t good for me, and I reached out to a preacher who really helped me talk through it all. People think orphans are kids whose parents have died, but 80 percent of orphans in the world have at least one parent who is alive somewhere. There are millions of kids just like me all across the U.S., and hundreds of millions all over the world.
We rely on the kindness and the couches of others to get us through the day. I had multiple high school coaches who looked out for me. Multiple college coaches. Deacons. Pastors. Aunties. Uncles. Friends. If even one of those people had let me slip, would you even know my name? Maybe not.
I talk to a lot of kids who have parents in prison, or who left them when they were young for one reason or another. I know the anger. The pain. The fear. Especially the loneliness. They just want somebody to say, “I care about you.” But that doesn’t happen enough, so they get into trouble.
As men, as athletes especially, we don’t like to talk about love. We talk about brotherhood and all that, but not love. But it’s the most important thing in a child’s life. More important than the kind of school you go to, or what neighborhood you live in, or even if you grow up around drugs and violence. If you are loved, you’ll make it out.“
“If you are loved, you’ll make it out.” This blog post struck me for its poignancy and its truth. I have been mentoring two young ladies for three years now. Neither young lady has her father in the picture. Neither of them are wealthy. One of their mothers is a cleaning lady, and the other one’s mother works as a cashier at Wal-Mart. Still, they are amazing, intelligent, talented young women and from the get-go, I would tell my husband and my family that I don’t worry too much about either of them, because it is obvious to me that they are loved. There is no doubt in my mind, that both young women are loved openly and fiercely by their mothers and by their families, and so, from the first time of meeting both of them, I knew that they would be okay. I am just so happy to add to their brimming pots of love, and I am so grateful that they add to my own pot, by loving me back.
If you are loved, you’ll make it out. It always comes down to love, doesn’t it? That’s the “why”. That’s “the how” about anything in life. Just love. Just be love. If you don’t feel like you are loved, then just start loving. It’ll come back to you tenfold. Giving love, automatically starts this miraculous boomerang phenomenon, so that when you give your love away, before you know it, you’ll get whacked in the head with more love than you know what to do with. Just don’t be stingy with your love. Don’t be conditional with your love. Just start loving. Love yourself. Love your life. Love Life. Love everything in your life, even the stuff that’s hard to love. Embody love, because underneath all of the stories, and all of the projections, and all of the insecurities, and all of the scramblings, and all of the puffery, all of the suffering, that’s all there really is to anything . . . Love. Who? Love. What? Love. Why? Love. Where? Love. How? Love. Just Love.
Rest in Peace, Demaryius Thomas. Rest in Love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
