MIAMI _ Early Monday morning, a 71-year-old woman trudged into the passenger seat of a Nissan sedan. She provided an address, and the GPS displayed a 45-minute trek south. The car's engine revved.
You ready?
"Well," she said, taking a deep breath, "I don't know.
"This is not my favorite place to go."
She knows she should make this trip more often, that she should see her son's resting place, but the emotions make it too difficult. It's been more than a year now since she visited.
Derrick Thomas, once the most feared man on the NFL's best defense, died 20 years ago next month, first paralyzed by a car wreck in Kansas City and then killed two weeks later by a blood clot in his legs. Born in Miami, he was the oldest of Edith Morgan's seven kids, the most popular player on a beloved Chiefs team and gone at 33.
On Sunday, the Chiefs will play in the Super Bowl, the game Morgan said her son always dreamed of reaching, just 30 miles from where Thomas was laid to rest. Seven days later, she will honor the 20th anniversary of his death with a bowling tournament to benefit charity.
Morgan would spend the 45-minute car ride reminiscing, initially about her son's football career and then about his lasting legacy, the Third and Long Foundation for child literacy.
But as the entrance to Dade Memorial South drew near, she quieted.
"Over there," she offered as directions in the vast cemetery.
The casket sits in a mausoleum, the former Chiefs linebacker surrounded by strangers. Morgan walked slowly and with a limp, her eyes locking on Section 2W, Row 3, far right.
Derrick Vincent Thomas.
January 1, 1967.
February 8, 2000.
With hands she passed on to her son, Morgan rubbed along the stone surface, gripping the inscription of his name and then a photo of Thomas donning the red No. 58 jersey the Chiefs would retire in 2009. Every day for 20 years, he has popped into her mind, hourly more than daily. His smile. His giving nature.
She wiped a single tear from her face and then another.
"Why did you have to go and leave me?" she said.
The details of those weeks in 2000 remain vivid. Morgan arrived home to the news Thomas had been in a serious car crash on Interstate 435 that killed one passenger instantly. Thomas was headed to Kansas City International Airport to catch a flight to St. Louis for the NFC Championship Game. He wasn't wearing a seat belt, a detail that still haunts his mother today.
The single-car wreck paralyzed Thomas, who received care at a hospital in his hometown of Miami. He had begun to adjust to a new normal, Morgan says, receiving daily rehab treatments, laughing as friends and teammates wheeled him down the facility's hallways.
All the while a blood clot grew in his legs. Without feeling, it remained undiscovered. It moved to his lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism. He died as Morgan's arms wrapped around him, helping to move him to his wheelchair.
"His eyes rolled back," she said. "I was in the nursing profession for 33 years, and my son literally died in my arms, and there was nothing I could do to save him."
Thomas left behind nine kids. Morgan remains close with many.
Some 22,000 fans would flock to Arrowhead Stadium to say goodbye. He'd connected with so many, known in Kansas City for a foundation still going strong today led by president Betty Brown.
"Everybody loved Derrick, I still get Derrick Thomas stories," Morgan said, and she pointed out a quote carved into the stone.
Your flame will eternally burn in our hearts, it reads.
Former Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson had said those words of Thomas. Morgan liked it. Thought it fit her son.
Thomas was a force of nature on the football field, his seven-sack game still an NFL record. In 2009, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But she remembers the smile, like the one in that image of her son sitting in the rain during that monsoon at Arrowhead.
Thomas never did receive a chance to play in the Super Bowl, two agonizing playoff losses tarnishing promising 1995 and 1997 seasons, years in which the Chiefs had the best defense in football. Morgan still follows closely, refers to the Chiefs as "we" and attends games at Arrowhead at least annually and usually even more often. She wishes Thomas had the opportunity to play with Patrick Mahomes. Their personalities would have meshed so well together, she says, and "They would've went to the Super Bowl earlier."
An artist's painting went viral earlier this year, showing Thomas with his arm wrapped around Mahomes. Morgan loved it. It also made her cry.
So will this week.
"This week is very, very emotional," Morgan said. "It's a very happy time, and it's a very sad time. Happy that the Chiefs made it after 50 years. Sad that's it's happening when Derrick worked so hard to try to get here, and he's going to miss it. But I know that he's up there shining down, looking at it and taking it all in stride."
After more than a year between trips to Dade Memorial South, Morgan is planning to return Friday. Former Chiefs players are coming to the Super Bowl, those who were once teammates with Thomas. They want to visit him. Talk to him.
She's not yet convinced she will be up for it.
On Monday, after she returned to the sedan, her phone flooded with calls. She had told friends and family she was coming. They worried for her.
"It's been a hard, emotional day," she said. "But it was good to see him again. I miss him, miss him, miss him so much."
