DAMARISCOTTA — The opioid crisis did not belong to Florence and Ernest Bourgon’s generation, but it collided with them just the same.

On June 12, their 22-year-old granddaughter, Morgan Mayo, died of a drug overdose in Massachusetts, where she was living with her parents.

“The pull of the drugs was stronger than any love we had for her,” Florence Bourgon said.

At the funeral, the 78-year-old grandmother stood up and told those who had gathered that she was going to spend her remaining days advocating for treatment and prevention of substance use disorder.

Then she went home and started going through the antiques and collectibles she and her husband spent 57 years amassing. She would host a yard sale at their home in Damariscotta and anything raised would be donated to local nonprofits.

The yard sale didn’t last a day or a weekend. It lasted the entire month of August. Each day, the Bourgons would put out tables with the items displayed. At night, they would shelter them in the garage.

By the end of the month, they had raised more than $30,000, half of which they donated to Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition, a local treatment organization, and the other half to Healthy Lincoln County, which focuses on prevention.

They’re not done.

With Morgan’s parents, Tamra and Joseph Mayo, and older brother, Derek Mayo, the Bourgons created a nonprofit, Oranges from Morgan, that they hope will allow them to continue raising both money and awareness about the disease that took Morgan’s life.

“The name of the charity invites a conversation,” Tamra Mayo said. “No one knows what it means, so they have to ask.”

The death of Morgan Mayo, and her family’s public response, is yet another reminder that the opioid crisis continues to decimate an entire generation. From 2015 to 2018, more than 1,400 Mainers died from drug overdose, and an estimated 75 percent of those have been linked to opioids, either illicit forms like heroin and fentanyl, or pharmaceutical opioids, like OxyContin.

Across the country, 186,273 people died from overdose between 2015 and 2017. The numbers for 2018 haven’t been finalized.

And although significant public investments have been made in treatment and prevention, gaps remain.

Representatives of the Lincoln County organizations that received donations from the charity said they were heartened by the family’s generosity but wished donations like this weren’t needed.

More than the money, Mayo’s family wants to keep the public conversation going.

Ernest Bourgon 82, said after family members called to tell him and his wife their granddaughter died, they also called local police in Damariscotta and asked if someone could go check on the couple. The town’s chief and another officer stopped by and stayed for an hour.

“Before they left, the chief told us, ‘Whatever you do, don’t frost it over,’ ” Bourgon recalled. “Tell the truth. Don’t be ashamed.”

MORGAN’S STORY

Morgan Mayo had a way of sticking up for people who were marginalized, her mother said.

At Morgan’s wake, a young woman shared a story. The two had attended middle school together and the woman said she was overweight and teased for it.

Morgan Mayo died of a drug overdose in June. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

“The kids at the lunch table would moo at me or call me names,” Tamra Mayo recalled the woman telling her. “Morgan was the only kid that stuck up for me.”

Morgan grew up in Boxford, a small town in northeast Massachusetts, but spent a lot of time in Maine, where her mother grew up and where her grandparents lived, first in Farmington and then Damariscotta.

Tamra said Morgan smoked marijuana recreationally and drank alcohol in high school but she didn’t worry about it.

She went to college at Arizona State University and, after her first year, was diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes.

“I think she fell into a real depression about that,” her mother said.

Morgan had friends who used opioids, and she fell into it. Tamra said her daughter had friends who had become addicted, even some who had died, but seemed to think neither would happen to her. She entered treatment a couple of times, with her family’s help, but relapsed, a common pattern for those with opioid use disorder.

This January, one of her best friends for most of her life overdosed on fentanyl and died. He was 22.

Morgan was sober at that time and living in a residential facility.

“I really thought she might relapse then,” Tamra said.

A couple of months later, she had met a guy who also was using drugs. He persuaded her and another man to rob a house in Newry, near Sunday River, where Morgan would often go to snowboard. They were caught and arrested.

Morgan’s parents didn’t bail her out right away.

“I slept very well while she was in jail,” her mother said through tears. “She was safe.”

After she came out of jail, she relapsed again. Her parents took her to the hospital to detox and then enrolled her in an intensive outpatient program.

The night before she died, Morgan sat on the deck of her parents’ home and told her mother that she didn’t blame them for anything.

“She said, ‘I wasn’t running from you or the family. I was running from myself,’ ” Tamra recalled.

Tamra went to bed. Morgan went into her bedroom and used for the final time.

GRANDPARENTS DRAWN INTO CRISIS

The opioid epidemic that has ravaged the nation over the last five years has been especially deadly for millennials.

When grandparents have been drawn into the crisis, it’s often because they are forced to become parents again to grandchildren whose own parents have either died from overdose or have lost custody because of their use.

Florence, a former teacher, and Ernest, a longtime pharmacist, said Morgan’s struggle wasn’t hidden from them.

“We were more open about it than maybe a lot of grandparents would be,” Florence said. “We didn’t judge her, and even when she died, we knew that’s not what she wanted. She just wanted the pain to go away.”

Ernest said he and his wife were close to Morgan. She wasn’t the kind of granddaughter who stopped calling after she became an adult.

Their instinct after she died was to find a way to honor her.

But their impromptu, monthlong yard sale became a mechanism for them to work through their grief.

Ernest estimated that 80 percent of the people who came by to purchase something, or just to make a donation, had their own stories about how the opioid crisis has touched their lives.

“It went on and on and on,” he said. “Their daughters or sons, or cousins. It was unbelievable.”

They sold paintings, antique dishes and figurines.

“A lot of it I didn’t want to sell, let’s be honest, they were my treasures,” Florence said. “But we’re old. We have to scale down. We can’t keep this stuff forever.”

Still, they didn’t expect it go so well. By the end of August, they had earned $30,000 and needed a place to donate it.

They settled on splitting the money between one organization that focuses on treatment – Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition – and another that prioritizes prevention – Healthy Lincoln County.

Dr. Ira Mandel, a former family physician, came to Maine in 2006 and started working in hospice care at Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport. He also treated patients in recovery, usually with Suboxone.

He started the Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition in 2016, sensing patients needed more than just Suboxone. It now operates two sober living houses, one for women and one for men.

He said he got an email from Tamra before the yard sale. She wanted to learn more about what the organization did. Mandel went to the yard sale and met with her and the Bourgons.

A month later, they were presenting him with a check for $15,000. “A gift from heaven,” Mandel called it.

Kate Martin, director of Healthy Lincoln County, was in the office alone one day this summer when the doorbell rang. It was Florence Bourgon.

“It was like she dropped out of the sky,” Martin said.

Martin said prevention work often gets overlooked because it’s hard to quantify results.

“We need to be putting out fires but install smoke detectors too,” she said.

Martin said she was humbled that the Mayo family, amid their own grief, could do something like this.

SHE HANDED OUT ORANGES

Morgan Mayo was studying psychology. Her mother said she wanted to be a drug and alcohol abuse counselor. She never finished her final semester.

But already, she was exhibiting a nurturing side.

Even in high school, Morgan was always giving friends rides. She would go through a tank of gas every couple of days.

That continued in Arizona, too.

At some point, she started keeping a big bag of oranges in her car.

Wherever she went, she would often encounter homeless people, or people struggling with drug addiction. Or sometimes both.

She knew – all too well – that giving them money would not be wise. So she handed out oranges instead. They were a good source of vitamin C and a good way to hydrate.

When the time came to pick a name for that charity that would honor her memory, her family settled on Oranges From Morgan.

With the yard sale over and the donations made, the family has more planned. Their efforts will bring awareness not just to substance use disorder but also to diabetes, which greatly affected Morgan at a fragile time.

“We’re all vulnerable,” Florence Bourgon said, echoing what she told the crowd at Morgan’s wake back in June.

The Bourgons’ home in Damariscotta still has its share of antiques and collectibles. They didn’t sell everything.

But more prominently displayed are pictures of Morgan. At high school graduation. Before her prom. Posing for a senior picture. Cuddling with her dog.

Like the charity, it gives them an opportunity to talk about Morgan and keep her in the present.

“She was so young,” her grandmother said.

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