It is just something that came up, and it's soon to make more sense why, but for now just note that at this moment in his life Guy Thomas does not have a tattoo.
The mind doesn't need extra reminders to remember her at all times.
Even though she was gone from this earth, she was close to him as he grew from a skinny toothpick to the type of pass-rushing recruit everyone wanted to get their hands on.
She was close when the man he names as one of his inspirations, a man named Michael York, told him, "Everything you're doing, you're doing for your mom. You're going to make her proud."
And Mariska Nyon will be close to him on Sunday morning. Man, she would've been some kind of proud. Guy Thomas is boarding an airplane, and he is leaving Miami because the best part of this story is still out there to be written.
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He is leaving behind a dangerous neighborhood. That place is home, and home is such forever. But Thomas will tell you home for him is also the kind of place where "you always have to watch your back."
He has lost friends to shootings in that neighborhood. According to York, Thomas himself once had a gun pulled on him, robbed of what money he had and a gold chain.
"It put fear in him, and every time something happened, when he was coming to my house or he's on the bus or something, he'd call me," York said. "He says 'Man, Coach, they're shooting over here. Can you just come pick me up? Can you come? Can you come right now?'"
This is why York eventually gets to the words, "I'm just glad to see him make it, and get out of this, you know?"
He'll fly to Nebraska to play football and take advantage of a free education he earned through circumstances that would knock many down. He played high school football at three different high schools, not because he didn't want to stick anywhere but because life circumstances and advice of others brought him there.
He had people trying to pull him so many different directions even up until that final day when he signed with Nebraska, when he stayed true to a commitment he had made in early August.
"I wanted something different," he said. "A different lifestyle."
Guy Thomas does not have a tattoo. What he has are birthmarks — one on his arm and another on his thigh. He has many siblings and all of them have those birthmarks.
There is a pause on the other end of the phone, but before the conversation shifts, a voice that doesn't say more words than necessary breaks the silence.
"It's a birthmark of belief."
***
Older brother was once a toothpick, too.
Matthew Thomas is now a senior linebacker at Florida State who led the Seminoles in tackles a season ago. Such a future was not so clear to anyone back when he was in the ninth grade.
York thinks of when he first met him at Booker T. Washington High School in Miami. Skinny kid with a big neck.
"They call him Big Six," someone told York when first introduced to Matthew.
"What's big about him?" York answered.
York, who at the time was working in the weight room and coaching linebackers at the school, took Matthew under his wing.
He learned about his mom. He also learned through talking to her that maybe Matthew could use a male influence in his life.
"I'm not trying to be his dad, but maybe I can help out," York thought.
So he did what he could to make sure Matthew got to class on time and helped put some meals in him.
York and his wife are medical foster parents and have small children. Because of that, he is always in high supply of PediaSure, a product he could get on discount.
So he'd give one a day to Matthew. Mix it with a little protein. The boy was about to get big.
Even before he really bulked up, Matthew would run down on the kickoff team and bust stuff up.
"All of a sudden all these people wanted to know who was Matthew Thomas," York said. "He blossomed from that and turned out to be one of the highest-recruited kids in Dade County."
Along the way, York began to realize Matthew had a lot of brothers, as well as a sister. One time while visiting Matthew at his house, he noticed a little kid sticking his head out the door. The kid didn't say a peep.
"He wouldn't even come outside. He was a tall kid, but just like a little stick."
Guy was shy. He wouldn't look York in the eye when he first started talking. When he introduced him to his kids, York's daughter would say, "Hiiii Guy." Sometimes there would be no response. York understood. The kid was sheltered. He wanted to reach him.
"He just needed to be polished, and just needed someone he could trust."
That first summer York started working with Guy, the kid weighed 128 pounds. Bring out the PediaSure. Keep the food coming. A few muscles on his arms showed up.
Even after his mother's death, while he lived with an aunt, Guy would often come over to the York house after a workout to do homework … and eat. And eat.
"My wife is making steaks, fried chicken, chicken and rice, rice and beans, just piling it on," York said. "And he was just like a garbage disposal, the way he'd eat."
The weight came. Even before it did, York placed a nickname on him.
"Hey, I'm going to make a name for you and you have to make a name for yourself," he told him. "You got to use this name to make something out of it."
"What name is that?
"Sack Man."
***
OK, he'd go get those sacks.
As a ninth grader on the junior varsity team, Guy had 11 of them at Hialeah High School. That summer, despite never playing a varsity snap, he received his first offer from Temple.
He'd move to Christopher Columbus High School his junior year, taking a train to get there each day, and to Booker T. Washington his senior year.
It didn't matter where he played. College coaches were tracking him. Like his brother Matthew, his recruitment blew up. By the August before his senior year, when he'd commit to Nebraska sight unseen, he already had 27 offers in pocket.
He liked that Nebraska defensive line coach John Parrella could talk to him not just about football, but real life.
"He's going to give everything I need to be a great person, a great player. Give me the tools of life," Thomas said. "And he gave me his word. I took his word and I trusted it."
He had told coaches he'd made his decision on signing day, but York suggested to Thomas he pledge to the Huskers before that.
"Get all the other schools off your back. They're confusing you," York told him. "If anything went wrong with Nebraska, we were going to decommit."
York was long in favor of Thomas ending up at Nebraska. He liked how Parrella was such an open book: "A week after I started talking to him, I knew Nebraska was going to be a fit for Guy."
Even after Nebraska switched defensive coordinators, moving from Mark Banker to Bob Diaco, moving from the 4-3 to the 3-4, and changing how Thomas might be used, that caused no major worry.
Listed at 6-feet-3, 200 pounds, Thomas said he was told he'd be used as an outside backer in a "Cat" position. "They told me I would be rushing 90 percent of the time and dropping back 10 percent of the time. I guess that's a good fit for me, because I can move."
He just ran track at Booker T. Washington this spring and points out he posted a top time in the 100 of 10.91 seconds.
Months before that, Husker fans had worried he might run to another school late in the recruiting process as they heard of Thomas making January official visits to places like Louisville and Pittsburgh.
Thomas also visited Lincoln that month. He wanted to compare. Could any of the other schools beat what he felt about Nebraska?
"They didn't."
Louisville, in particular, had the pedal to the floor in pursuit of him. Cardinals coaches made a house visit one night. They were hard to get out the door.
"Everybody was coming at him from all different directions," York said.
For those who criticize recruits for waffling, just understand how their phones buzz nonstop in those final days before signing, the promises that are told, the opinions offered to them from all corners.
Thomas respected what York told him as much as any, though. He describes York as taking a fatherly role in his life, and "a coach that stuck with me and gave me the boost I need to be that elite player."
One night very close to signing day, as Thomas' phone buzzed, the two had a talk that sticks out to York. Thomas wanted to stay with Nebraska, but these coaches just kept calling and calling and calling with promises and promises and promises. What's a kid to do?
"I said, 'Bro … you want to do it the right way,'" York said of his advice. "If your mom was here, that's the way she would do it. Remember that.' And the conversation ended that night."
The phone did not sit quiet.
"Man, let it ring. Let it ring."
***
He was just 15 when the worst news came. It was the first week of 2015.
Mariska Nyon, a Suriname emigrant, had gone back to her native land just a few months before.
It is hard to say with exactness what happened. She had just been there two or three months, as York recalls, but when as she returned home she felt her breathing cutting short.
"It just got a hold to her," York said "It was like a parasite in her. It just made her weak. She couldn't walk as much."
There were times when it appeared her health was improving. But then, just as quickly, it turned completely the other way, with her lungs failing her.
On the day he committed to Nebraska, way back on Aug. 4, a commitment he would honor, Thomas had her at the top of his mind as usual, telling the Journal Star, "I know that my mom would tell me to keep working hard and push myself to my limit. She doesn't like lazy people and I’m not a lazy person. She wanted me to be successful and that's exactly what I'm going to do."
Fast-forward to this week, the week he graduated, the week he begins a new chapter. Two days before he was to leave for Lincoln and move in with roommate Damion Daniels, he said thinking of her and his family only makes him go harder.
"One day I would like to be able to take care of my family," he said. "It's my biggest motivation."
Guy Thomas does not have a tattoo.
He has birthmarks from her, and memories from her, and a work ethic from her, and motivation from her.
"That's all I need."