The Elliot Tree

Sometimes, just a glimpse of an all-but-forgotten memory can suddenly morph into the present without warning, ambushing your mind’s eye and propelling the distant past forward into the immediate now. Like watching old sitcom reruns on a high-def television, these revived memories become fresh, new stories again, especially when documenting a tragically truncated life. A firstborn son’s life. My Elliot’s life.

Such is the bittersweet gift of grief and grace.

My Elliot, who left us on August 5, 2018, would have been 33 on the 17th of this month. Still firmly embedded in the cracks and crevices of my forever-fractured heart, my Elliot touched so many lives. I think it’s hard for any mother to fully fathom the scope and reality of her adult child’s life, and in my case, death—part of you, but not. You give birth to a human who grows under your heart for more than nine months, and then, they become their own version of a person in their own brave new world. Without you. Creating connections, relationships, experiences, and so many memories. Beautiful and heart-wrenching.

I can’t help but conjure up the comforting and appropriate quote from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet: “Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.”

As parents, we are only vessels for their journeys, not creators of their purpose, path, or destiny. Like the “Elliot tree,” rooted in love, but wildly individual in form, he was shaped by forces beyond my control. Yet I will always cherish my sacred role—to support, not to steer; to love, not to limit.

I will never know every story, every connection, every glance he made. Not possible, but I welcome all that come my way, like my dear friend Debbie Eichner, whom Elliot adored, sending me photos of youth group shenanigans at First Presbyterian Church that I had never seen on Mother’s Day last year. They were like discovering new parts of Elliot, being present for new moments of his still precious life.

That happened this week.

I received a Facebook message from John Bergere, Elliot’s boss at Global Payments, his serious post-university job, which he adored. I remember his delight in saying: “I can’t believe they are paying me to do this, Mom. I love it so much.”

Having earned a degree in classical saxophone from the University of Toronto, El taught himself so much—bass guitar to Japanese and Miata car repair to the Shakuhachi flute, to name a few. He began his “co-mance” with computers and coding in high school. After returning from Toronto, he asked me for the money to get a Linux Red Hat programming certificate. I wasn’t even sure what it was. Before I knew it, he had a spectacular job offer as a systems engineer at Global Payments (called Heartland at the time).

I could not believe his boss was reaching out now.

“We have an Elliot tree,” he said when we connected. Something about that gutted me. “We speak of Elliot often and continue to miss him very much. We created this memorial for him—the Elliot tree and a plaque at the Richardson office, but we’re closing it and wondered if you were interested in the tree or might know of a place for it that was special to Elliot.”

“I am so touched. That’s beautiful,” I told him with tears welling. “Yes, yes, I am interested. Let me think about what would be best.” I was so overwhelmed to hear his words—the warm connection and genuine appreciation. The bitterest of sweet.

I texted my horticulturally gifted friends and discovered it was a Weeping Fig, a flavor of Ficus. There was something piercingly poetic about that. Weeping, indeed, and fragile yet enduring.

John continued when we chatted, “Elliot made such an impact on us while he was here. He and a coworker, Josh, built the platform we still use today, our first cloud platform. Elliot just figured it out. I consider him our first cloud engineer.”

“Wow. He knew so much.” I can hardly bear the wide and heavy feeling in my chest—I thought my body could not contain it—glimpses of the Elliot I knew but also did not.

“He was brilliant,” John added. “I remember our whiteboard sessions when he would tell me, ‘That won’t work,’ and he was always right.”

This experience filled me to overflowing and frankly, renewed my faith in humanity during these dark times that are verging on pre-apocalyptic. I was overwhelmed that Elliot’s boss would contact me six years after his death with such a meaningful gesture, complete with such stirring stories of his quintessential being.

It was extraordinary grace, but almost more than I could hold all at once.

How I regret the lost potential of his short, intense life, but what a time he had. I realized we can never leave the past behind, but I am grateful for this road that takes me back on surprising, new paths.

“We will never forget Elliot,” John said. “He had nothing on his resume at the time— just the administrator of your AWS email server, I believe, but there was something special about him—a rare person, indeed.”

As Mary Oliver said:

When I am among the trees,

Especially the willows and the honey locusts,

Equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

They give me hints of gladness,

I would almost say they save me, and daily.