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A memorial dedicated to Elayna Burrows-Gust grows along a stretch of North Monroe Street.
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now falls steadily outside the Heritage Funeral Home as about 80 people file into its small chapel. Portraits of Elayna, smiling and wide-eyed, sit near the entryway. Soft piano tempers the silence as mourners settle into their crowded pews. A small white casket rests at the front of the room. Pastor Jenkins leads the group in prayer and opens the floor to share stories about Elayna. A few rise nervously. They tell of a sweet girl who teased her brothers, practiced Bible verses and left a mark on each person there. Jenkins offers that they may take comfort in Elayna’s innocence. She has surely gone to her Lord in heaven. He has prepared for her a mansion. “I’m pretty sure it has handprints on the wall,” he says with a light chuckle. “If not already, I’m sure soon.” Together the group sings the children’s hymn “Jesus Loves Me” over the quiet plinking of the piano. Her mother, released from the hospital just days earlier, sits
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near the casket. Loved ones kneel beside her. Sorrowful music plays over a slide show of Elayna’s life. Photos depict her as an infant, turning into a toddler, growing into a kindergartner. Tissue boxes circulate down each row. Some mourners lean into each other’s shoulders to weep as photos roll by of Elayna holding an Easter egg basket, standing in front of a Christmas tree, toting her backpack to school. Many of the pictures come from the same holidays or gatherings, suggesting how difficult it can be to fill a slide show with so few years to look back on. “A 5-year-old should not be gone from us,” Jenkins says, adding, “There is a lot that we don’t understand. There is a lot that occurs in this world where we don’t know what to do.” But in Elayna’s brief time, she touched many. Jenkins says he sees her outsized presence, her spark still shining within those who knew her.
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illions of commuters take to the road each day. Tens of thousands of Spokane drivers travel our shared roadways, connecting and crossing throughout the city. We speed along our parallel lanes. We merge in and out of each other’s lives. We idle side by side at red lights, lost in our own journeys. Some of us will not make it. The flashing lights and sirens will close in. Investigators will set to measuring. But some things cannot be measured. Despite all the telling of stories, all the collecting of evidence, and all the calculations on points of impact, our trajectories and legacies remain mysteries. We all just keep careening around, intersecting and bypassing. Who knows what marks we leave on the people we pass by along the winding paths of our lives? An incident report may catalog our birth dates, times of death and next of kin. But only those close to us will know whether we gave freely of ourselves, valued friendship or chased dreams. Only they will know whether we loved Elayna, age 5 CHRIS BOVEY PHOTO poetry or ponies or white kittens. In recent days, Marv Nordhagen says he has come to terms with his parents’ fate. Floyd and Margaret spent a lifetime together and now they rest side by side in the Chattaroy Cemetery. Their reliable Plymouth has gone to a towing company as scrap. Marv says his parents lived on their own terms. They raised their children to believe they could accomplish anything. They took care of their neighbors. But beyond that, they exemplified a steadfast and uncommon love that even strangers could recognize as they clung together amid broken glass and twisted steel. “You don’t see a lot of real love in the world today,” he says. “Not that kind of love. … I think people want to have the kind of love that it looked like they had. That’s why it grabbed people’s attention.” Our paths may be uncertain and our destinations unknown, but if you look, there are lessons scattered along the road. jacobj@inlander.com
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