Daily Prompt : "If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why?" August 21, 2026

“My beautiful Mother, Mary Verner.”

Campers, If I could relive one day from my past it would it be the last day I spent with my beautiful Mother.

Warning, what I am about to tell you is a bittersweet tragedy and a reflection of one of the many tragedies that my life has been plagued with.

As many of you may already know from my bio or my autobiography, from the age of six months till my tenth birthday I lived in 32 foster homes and institutions.

My Mother was forced to flee from our home in Saint John, New Brunswick to Toronto, Ontario in order to escape from the abusive relationship her marriage to my Father had become.

She escaped taking my elder sister and brother with her.

Due to my age she thought it was best to leave me behind in the care of my Father.

Dad was only 19 years old and quickly learned that he could not take proper care of me.

He claims he had no choice but to give the Catholic Children’s Aid custody of Hence the 32 foster homes.

This is the lead-in for my answering the prompt.

Long story short, I would never meet my Mother until I was released on parole from Dorchester Maximum Security Penitentiary to live in Toronto.

I was 22 years old.

I found my Brother and Sister and against their wishes I found Mom.

Over the next year and a half we grew extremely close and I was very happy to finally have her in my life.

Like the usual pattern of my life that happiness and joy would end tragically.

Mom attended my marriage to my first wife, Michelle, and spent the first week of my honeymoon with us.

Mom left Michelle and I’s place wearing the biggest smile you could imagine.

Mom had recently left an abusive relationship with a bad alcoholic by the name of Robert George Stephenson.

I must add that he was “a real piece of work”!

I could not be around him.

It was I who convinced Mom to get away from the relationship.

A choice that haunts my very soul everyday since.

Mom stepped out of the taxi she road from my place and pulled out her keys to unlock the door to her tiny little home on Baseball Place here in Toronto.

She found her door was already unlocked but paid no mind as her brother, my Uncle Junior, had been staying with her.

She entered her home expecting to see Uncle Junior only to find Stephenson standing before her.

He was holding a boning knife. The sharpest knife in a butcher’s collection.

Without uttering a single word he lashed out and opened my Mother’s abdomen like a pinata.

Her bowels spilling out onto her livingroom floor.

He then called the police.

The wonderful doctors at St. Micheal’s Trauma Centre managed to keep Mom alive for two weeks.

This allowed me to say “Good-bye”.

Mom ascended on August 1, 1981.

Hopefully to a better place than this!

My marriage fell apart.

My mind fell apart.

My life fell apart.

I would spend the next ten years drinking heavy and doing Heroin.

Meeting my second wife, Jennifer, saved and sobered me.

Jennifer and I would spend the next 42 years together.

So,

If I could relive one day from my life it would be July 13, 1981.The last day Mom spent with me.

The day she left my apartment wearing that wonderful and biggest smile you could imagine.

I still see that smile when I think of that day. (Which is all the time.)

Mom’s last words to me on the day she passed were,

“Danny, promise me that you will not go after the goof and end up back in prison.”

I promised, literally on her deathbed, that as hard as it would be I would not go after him.

Living the lifestyle that I lived most my life made keeping that promise difficult.

Especially when the Courts sentenced him to a measly five years.

I struggled.

I still struggle.

I always will!

That day and that smile is what keeps me going.

I would love to go back to that day and see Mom’s smile in real life one more time.

I will have to wait until I ascend to my personal Valhalla to see it again.