Over the next three years I had the pleasure of watching him grow, mellow slightly, and turn into one of the hardest working students I had last year. He was a captain of the wrestling team. He sat in the front seat in my AP Government class. He grinded for me like no other student last year. And I remember how proud of him I felt as I read his name last June at graduation. – A Familiar Feeling, But Worse This Time. Nate Bowling.
During sport announcements, Bowling nicknamed Crawford “the prophet” because his name was Elijah. Crawford decided he wanted to be known as “the predator” and begged his teacher to call him by the new moniker. Bowling told him he’d change the nickname if Crawford got an A on the next quiz. “He nailed it,” Bowling said. “School didn’t come easy to him, but he worked hard. He was the most energetic student I ever taught.”– News Tribune, Life cut short for hard-working teen killed on Tacoma street.
Elijah was one of a kind. He had a contagious spirit, a tender heart and always made others laugh. In my Spanish class, he struggled at first but was determined to excel and soon became one of my top performing students. The last year I had him, his senior year, his schedule was switched around and he needed to be moved into another class period of mine. I was very hesitant. He had improved so much and my sixth period was my worst class. I had several boys in there that were immature and caused a lot of behavioral problems. I talked to him about my concerns and how I didn’t want him to get wrapped up in it. His response blew me away. He said, “I’m going to move into that class and I’m going to be a role model for those boys”. And he did just that while still amazing me with his Spanish ability.
Oh how much he loved pineapples! He would talk about “pinas”, which means pineapples, and I swear he’d find a way to work it into any sentence in Spanish. The week he died was extremely hard for all of us, especially my fourth period class. Many of those students had the same Spanish class with him for two years, including his best friend Lawrence. Having Elijah gone meant a piece of us as a unit was missing. He had graduated and wasn’t in my third year Spanish class that year but I have no doubt that if he had one year left in school, he would have been in the class. On the day we all received the news, I couldn’t even look my students in the face without forcibly holding back tears let alone teach the class. So, we watched a movie for two days. On the third day, we sat in a circle, took time to remember Elijah and ate pineapple. Somehow we had to go back into the grove of learning Spanish while we were still trying to grieve the loss. I believe that I never once allowed myself to morn for him. I didn’t know how to. I had never lost someone who was younger than myself. All my loved ones who have passed away lived long lives and I could easily rationalize their death and praise the life they had. Elijah, not so much. His life was cut too short and was caught up in a cycle that he was trying to escape. So somehow pineapples became the way to remember him while also acknowledging the pain my students felt.
The hardest part of our fourth period unit was when his best friend Lawrence returned to class. I hadn’t expected that he’d return so quickly, it was only three days after his death. The most devastating part is that we weren’t even in my classroom, but were working in the library. Lawrence later told me that he stood outside my classroom unable to come in. Being there brought back so many memories of him and Elijah together in Spanish class. He just stood outside the door crying. When he finally got the courage to open the door, no one was there. Still to this day, when I think of him finally getting the strength to open the door and being greeted by emptiness, gives me this horrible, gut wrenching feeling. Lawrence eventually found us in the library and didn’t make it two feet in the door before breaking down again. I broke down also. He cried, I cried, he cried some more and I tried so hard to be the adult strength he needed at that moment. I listened to everything he needed to get out, including every detail of the death. Elijah’s body on the cold cement, the blood, so much blood, the police, the pain, the screams from Elijah’s mother. I was speechless on how to help, how to cover the pain or how to make it better. I listened and listened. It will forever be one of the hardest moments of my life and not just my teacher life.
Now, one year later, I sit in my home making an altar for Elijah as his death falls on Day of the Dead, a holiday we honor in my class. This year, I’m not making an altar for my grandmother who lived a full and rich life. I’m making it for one whose live was not of the streets, but taken by it. One whose murder still haunts me every time I hear of another death of a young person in Tacoma. I wonder, who now? When will it stop? I pretend that putting on a t-shirt that reads “and still we rise” makes up for the pain. But somehow I recognize that there may be another obstacle ahead that we again have to rise above and somehow I have to go to work each day praying I won’t lose another.
I want his death, and the altar, to be a reminder to my students to never stop trying. That instead they need to be the student in the front of the class, the kid acing AP Governments tests and being a role model for others. That their potential can reach beyond their expectations as long as they don’t set limits for themselves. Elijah set no limits, in academics nor sports. He reached far beyond the limits some would put on him being that he was a black male from East side Tacoma.
So, in memory of a great young man, on November 2nd, on Day of the Dead, we will eat Pan de Muerto and pineapple.