bluesooner17
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NORMAN — When T’ona Edwards didn’t hear from her mom in the hours before the Oklahoma women’s basketball team took on West Virginia on Jan. 8, she started to worry.
Markita Edwards, the one who texted her before every single basketball game for as long as T’ona could remember, hadn’t sent her daughter any words of encouragement before the game.
All throughout the team’s warm up in Morgantown, W.Va., T'ona’s phone lit up with messages from family members on the locked screen, but none were from Markita. Trying to stay focused, she left them unread until after the game. Then there was the call from her aunt to the team’s athletic trainer Carolyn Loon.
Loon told her not to worry, so she brushed it off, putting it out of her mind as she prepared to play. As T'ona played, Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale directed her team from the sideline, fighting to stay in the moment. OU was struggling to beat the Mountaineers on their home court, and the win would be a quality one for the Sooners. But with her team down by doubledigits with 40 seconds left, she finally let her mind slip away from the game.
You see, when Loon took the call earlier in the day, everything wasn’t OK. Instead, T'ona’s aunt delivered the unimaginable news: Markita had died that morning in Spencer.
When the game finished, Coale and assistant coach Jan Ross pulled T'ona aside to tell her the news.
“My mama was the type of person who you could never tell if anything was going wrong,” T'ona said. “She always smiled. I had my problems this year, too. I didn’t know it was a lot on her, but she never showed it. That day was definitely a shock."
Once she got back to Oklahoma, T'ona surrounded herself with her family and learned that her mother had been in much more pain than she’d let on in the last month. The death of her grandmother — Markita’s mother — wore on her more than Markita told T'ona. She hadn’t been eating or sleeping much, and that Sunday at 8 a.m., a blood clot in her lung took her life in an instant.
“I just wish that I knew what was going on, because no mother really wants to put their burdens on their daughter, which I understand, but it still doesn’t make sense to me now,” T'ona said. “Now I remind myself to ask my family, if they have any issues or what’s wrong with them, instead of just talking about my personal issues.”
For T'ona, grieving meant putting down a basketball for at least a week. That round orange ball connected mother and daughter as much as their identical infectious smiles, and the immediate pain was too much to play through.
Markita played basketball at Cameron University. Before T'ona could even dribble a ball, she was crawling around on the hardwood at Cameron as she watched her mom finish her career. Once she was big enough, she resurrected her mom’s smile back out on the court. When T'ona earned a spot at Oklahoma, Markita and her family made sure to go to every single home game. And when the game was finished, she always met T'ona with a grin and words of encouragement on the back stairs inside the women’s practice facility, just a hundred yards away from the main court at Lloyd Noble Center.
“Every picture of my mother, she was just smiling,” T'ona said. “That’s what brought joy to my family, what brought joy to her. Not seeing that anymore, that kind of derails me sometimes. But even during the game, I can feel myself spacing out or looking up and don’t see my mother in the stands. Sometimes it takes me away from that. But I snap back out of that when I look at my dad or my teammates.”
Even through the sorrow of the last three months, T’ona’s family came out for every home game, and when T'ona’s Senior Night against Baylor rolled around, they turned out en masse with her extended family. And this time, they brought Markita.
Markita Edwards, the one who texted her before every single basketball game for as long as T’ona could remember, hadn’t sent her daughter any words of encouragement before the game.
All throughout the team’s warm up in Morgantown, W.Va., T'ona’s phone lit up with messages from family members on the locked screen, but none were from Markita. Trying to stay focused, she left them unread until after the game. Then there was the call from her aunt to the team’s athletic trainer Carolyn Loon.
Loon told her not to worry, so she brushed it off, putting it out of her mind as she prepared to play. As T'ona played, Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale directed her team from the sideline, fighting to stay in the moment. OU was struggling to beat the Mountaineers on their home court, and the win would be a quality one for the Sooners. But with her team down by doubledigits with 40 seconds left, she finally let her mind slip away from the game.
You see, when Loon took the call earlier in the day, everything wasn’t OK. Instead, T'ona’s aunt delivered the unimaginable news: Markita had died that morning in Spencer.
When the game finished, Coale and assistant coach Jan Ross pulled T'ona aside to tell her the news.
“My mama was the type of person who you could never tell if anything was going wrong,” T'ona said. “She always smiled. I had my problems this year, too. I didn’t know it was a lot on her, but she never showed it. That day was definitely a shock."
Once she got back to Oklahoma, T'ona surrounded herself with her family and learned that her mother had been in much more pain than she’d let on in the last month. The death of her grandmother — Markita’s mother — wore on her more than Markita told T'ona. She hadn’t been eating or sleeping much, and that Sunday at 8 a.m., a blood clot in her lung took her life in an instant.
“I just wish that I knew what was going on, because no mother really wants to put their burdens on their daughter, which I understand, but it still doesn’t make sense to me now,” T'ona said. “Now I remind myself to ask my family, if they have any issues or what’s wrong with them, instead of just talking about my personal issues.”
For T'ona, grieving meant putting down a basketball for at least a week. That round orange ball connected mother and daughter as much as their identical infectious smiles, and the immediate pain was too much to play through.
Markita played basketball at Cameron University. Before T'ona could even dribble a ball, she was crawling around on the hardwood at Cameron as she watched her mom finish her career. Once she was big enough, she resurrected her mom’s smile back out on the court. When T'ona earned a spot at Oklahoma, Markita and her family made sure to go to every single home game. And when the game was finished, she always met T'ona with a grin and words of encouragement on the back stairs inside the women’s practice facility, just a hundred yards away from the main court at Lloyd Noble Center.
“Every picture of my mother, she was just smiling,” T'ona said. “That’s what brought joy to my family, what brought joy to her. Not seeing that anymore, that kind of derails me sometimes. But even during the game, I can feel myself spacing out or looking up and don’t see my mother in the stands. Sometimes it takes me away from that. But I snap back out of that when I look at my dad or my teammates.”
Even through the sorrow of the last three months, T’ona’s family came out for every home game, and when T'ona’s Senior Night against Baylor rolled around, they turned out en masse with her extended family. And this time, they brought Markita.