Kelly Melancon
Appearances
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
The look on my mom's face... was just like, I don't know, like she was scared. Somehow like she knew something bad was going to happen to her. I don't think I've ever seen her have that expression. And I asked her not to go. I was like, please don't go. You're going to get involved with something that you shouldn't. She was like, I'll be fine.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
Right. So there's a chance she could be underneath.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
I remember him telling me, that he knew what happened to my mom. He told me about how hard it was to find me first. And then he was like, the reason why I'm trying to find you, I was trying to find you, is because I've been knowing what happened to your mom. And this man is a dangerous man. and I want to do something about it.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
And he said... That he was like, I had to do it. I just had to do it, man. She started freaking out. And he said, you had to do what? He said, I had to kill her. I had to.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to call you whenever we get to the hotel. I love you.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
She was more of a friend to me than a mom. I was not treated like a child. So I feel like I grew up early, early on. Like, I knew about things that a kid shouldn't know about. And I think she did that to protect me in a way, like... You need to know about the badness of this world so you can protect your sister. My sister wasn't treated or raised like that, but I was.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
I remember her being really funny, smart. She was always, you know... dancing, and she was a happy person, except for whenever she wasn't. She had a lot of unresolved depression, and I knew that about her. She was in and out of rehab, so she would get clean, and everything was good, and then slowly over time, her unchecked depression, untreated depression would just
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
weigh on her more and more and more, and you could see it on her face, and then she would end up going back into doing crack. So the good memories I remember about my mom is her being, you know, funny, happy, listening to the 5 o'clock blast-off, which I still do, and a lot of the sadness sprinkled in between.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
It was, my life had been hard. It's been a lot less hard since my grandparents had adopted us, but it wasn't easy not knowing what happened to her, you know? I never wanted to give up on the idea that she just ran away, but I figured that wasn't the case, but I always was like, but I feel her presence still, you know?
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
That's why I feel her presence is because she's watching over me, not because she's still on this earth, you know? But I never wanted to admit it to myself that that was a possibility.
The Deck
Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)
And as soon as I left, I was worried about her the whole way there. I got to the hotel room finally and I called her and no answer. And I knew something was wrong because she had just gotten a cell phone and she would always answer. And I called her every day after that and she never picked up.