By Angela Watts
Assistant G.M., Washington D.C. Metro Area
When T.J. Wilson was a young boy, he would spend hours sitting in front of the television. He’d sneak down to the family’s basement and sit alone on the floor – his already long legs curled up underneath him – and as close to the screen as possible.
And, wide-eyed, he’d stare.
Only, even as an elementary school child, it wasn’t cartoons, sports or music videos that mesmerized the 9-year-old who is now a senior standout on Hayfield’s basketball team. It was old home videos of his mother, Deborah Wilson, who died of Adenocarcinoma, cancer of the small intestine, when he was barely a toddler.
“I’d just sit there and watch a whole tape, from start to finish, probably two or three times a week,” T.J. said. “I guess I was trying to create memories by just seeing her on tape.
“It was all I had of her.”
Now, though, the engaging 17-year-old shares so much more with his mom – her outgoing personality, propensity for silliness, loving nature and contagious smile.
In fact, T.J. is the only of Deborah and Anthony Wilson, Sr.’s three children who shares nearly all of her facial features. His two older sisters, Tonya, 31, and Toshia, 25, look more like their dad.
“I hear it all the time,” T.J. said, laughing. “Whenever we go down to North Carolina my mom’s friends who haven’t seen me since I was a baby will take one look at me and say, ‘That’s Debbie’s son, ain’t it?’ It happens every time.”
And though he shakes his head at the thought, the truth is T.J. said he finds solace looking in the mirror and seeing so much of his mom staring back at him.
“It’s nice … it is,” he said. “It’s like it comforts me.”
So, too, does the new memorial tattoo on his left bicep that he got on Christmas Eve as a present from his father.
“I think it’s a very nice sentiment,” Tonya said. “I just wish he would have had more time with our mom. I mean, I wish Toshia and I had had more time with her, too. But he was so young that I feel like he got cheated.
“She was such a wonderful person … I think the tattoo is a wonderful tribute to our mother.”
The first health complication came when Deborah was five months pregnant with T.J.
She nearly miscarried before being diagnosed with placenta previa, a condition that causes internal bleeding and required her to spend the last three months of her pregnancy hospitalized and on complete bed rest.
“I can remember when he was finally born that he just cried and cried and cried,” Anthony said. “The nurse gave him to his mom and he kept crying. But then she handed him to me, and all the sudden he stopped.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I always felt something in that moment … like God was preparing the two of us for something to happen, because we’ve always been really close.”
It was just 18 months later, in January of 1993, that Deborah started experiencing severe stomach pain. More than once, Anthony awoke to find his wife curled up on the floor next to the bed. They made a couple trips to the hospital and saw multiple doctors before the cancer was discovered in her small intestine. It had also begun to spread to her liver.
“We came home from the hospital and immediately told the children that she was very sick,” Anthony said. “But we also told them that she was going to get treatment and we had no idea how long she would live.
“I told them she might out-live all of us.”
But seven months later, on Aug. 9, 1993 – in the same year that she and Anthony had planned a big, church wedding to renew their wedding vows after 15 years of marriage – Deborah passed away, leaving behind Anthony, 39, Tonya, 16, Toshia, 9, and T.J., 2.
And in that instant, the family dynamics were turned upside down.
T.J. and Toshia were too young to fully understand; they still only wanted to be kids. But Tonya was thrown into adulthood.
“My sister was kind of forced into the role where she had to be the grown-up,” Toshia said. “So it wasn’t us sharing secrets anymore. Me and my brother, we had our own little language. But my sister had to be the ‘grown up.'”
Tonya, who herself was just a junior at Hayfield High School, took T.J. with her when she left for school and dropped him off at daycare on her way. Her little brother would wrap his arms around her and beg her not to leave. Then, when she’d stop to pick him back up on her way home to meet Toshia after school, he’d see her and come running with his arms spread wide.
“When it happened I kind of had to take on the ‘mom’ duties immediately,” Tonya said. “T.J. started clinging to me pretty quickly because we did everything together.
“He called me ‘Mommy’ until he was 5.”
Though she admits it felt odd at first, Tonya grew to love the reference, so much so that it saddened her when he eventually stopped. And though he did stop calling her mom, T.J. said those maternal feelings remain today.
“I know she gave up a lot and made big sacrifices to take care of me and my sister when we were little,” T.J. said. “She didn’t go to the college she wanted – I believe she wanted to go to Virginia Tech and she got in, but she stayed and went to George Mason because of me – and I know she gave up a lot of her social life to stay at home and take care of me, too.
“I’ll always look at her differently. Even now sometimes I’ll be at her house and I’ll lay down with her and she feels more like a mom than a sister. She’s the only mother-figure I ever really had, so I don’t think that will ever change.”
Still, each time Tonya held young T.J. in her arms and passed the framed photo at the top of the staircase in their family home in Lorton, she would point to the photo of Deborah and ask, “Do you know who that is?” The toddler would tell her that that was his real mommy. And, each time, Tonya asked, “Do you know what happened to her?”
T.J.’s response was always, “She’s in heaven.”
Though he might not have truly understood the concept at the time, that, of course, changed as he got older.
“It really started to affect T.J., I think, when he was in about the third or fourth grade,” Anthony said. “That’s when he really started to understand it. And, you know, kids will always be kids. So that’s about the time he started getting teased about it sometimes. I remember one day I was sitting outside on the steps and the kids were playing, and I heard one of them yell, ‘You don’t have a mom! Your mom’s dead!’
“I could have intervened, but I wanted to see how he would handle that because it was something he was going to have to deal with for the rest of his life. I wanted to see how he was going to cope. So I just sat there and waited, and then heard T.J. say, ‘Oh yeah, well your mom’s ****!'”
T.J. doesn’t even remember that exchange – but, to this day, it still cracks his father up.
It was also, though, the kind of incident that prompted the video-watching and the desire to know more about his mom.
“It was his way of getting to know her, of seeing what she looked like and learning how she talked,” Anthony said. “He’d get so drawn into it.”
But that was not always a good thing. After he was done watching the tapes, Anthony noticed that T.J. would fall into a bit of a funk.
For several days, he’d be moody and mischievous and would sometimes even get in trouble at school. So a family therapist suggested Anthony start removing the tapes from the home entertainment center – not all at once but a few videos at a time – to keep boxed away until he was older.
The new outlet for T.J. became sports. His dad introduced him to tennis first, but it was basketball that ultimately captured his attention.
“Unless you were supposed to hit the ball over the fence, I don’t think I was ever very good at tennis,” T.J. said, laughing. “I was great at that. But I think I ended up playing more basketball on those courts than tennis.”
So it was basketball and football that became his passions, although when he entered high school he opted to give up football to concentrate fully on basketball.
This season for Hayfield (8-2) T.J. is averaging 15 points and seven rebounds per game. But in the three games since getting the tattoo, those numbers have jumped to 21 points and nine rebounds per game.
He attributes the improvement to having his mom – via the tattoo – with him on the court.
“I think I’ve always missed her most when I was playing sports,” T.J. said. “Whether it was football or basketball, I’d see my teammates’ moms yelling from the stands. And even if they didn’t know exactly what was going on, they were into the game more than anyone else. I always wondered what that would feel like.
“But I know that everything can’t go my way all of the time. Life isn’t perfect … and I know that where she went was a better place than here. I’m just glad she’s not in pain anymore.
“And, really, I’ve been blessed in so many other ways. I don’t have everything … but I wouldn’t trade the family I have for anything.”
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