Elliot was wearing green and white socks on August 5, 2018, the day he somehow flew off his motorcycle over the side of an elevated entrance ramp—and into the arms of the angels. I could hardly bring myself to pull them out of the left black-leather boot sitting still on the floor at my feet next to the glass coffee table. Unsoiled, they were wadded up together in a haphazard ball. I imagined some harried ER nurse or technician removing them hastily before pushing the gurney holding my son’s fatally bludgeoned body down the stark white corridor to the operating room.
I was not there yet.
I found the socks after I mustered the strength to open the stuffed white plastic drawstring bag I received from the hospital with the words “E. Wright – Maj. Trauma, 08.05.18,” marked in black Sharpie on the side. They were turned inside out, but I could tell they were covered with tiny shamrocks and other little icons. I gasped but could not swallow for a moment as my eyes welled with tears like a filling bathtub. I could barely see. The smallest details always seem to have the biggest impact. What perverse and horrifying luck they wrought. I lifted the bunch of bright green fabric to my nose to catch one last whiff of his life. There was a faint, earthy odor that I immediately recognized in all its bittersweetness.
Oh, how Elliot loved socks—an avid collector of the most eclectic colors, patterns and prints. I smiled. They hailed from Tokyo, Toronto, Lubbock, New York City and Amazon—the quirkier, the better. For his last with me Christmas, I bought Bombas for him and for his brother, Ian—thick, warm and cushy with a mission. One purchase, one donated. The Tom’s Shoes of socks. But Elliot seemed to have foot struggles all his short life. Just a couple of weeks before his death, he mentioned needing to see a podiatrist for the third or fourth time to extract tiny shards of glass he had accidentally stepped on in the middle of the night after he dropped a wine glass on his loft’s concrete floor. And how I remember several visits to the orthopedist when he was a teenager to have his painfully ingrown toenails surgically excised.
“Cut straight across,” I would recommend—but he always followed the curve.
Being a single boy-mom is not for the faint of heart.
Yet these green socks seemed to have a life of their own. A couple of days after Elliot left the earth forever, George, a Northwestern pal, thespian, and medium/psychiatrist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, messaged me on Facebook with fierce urgency. It was surprising. We had not spoken in more than 30 years. Not even a “like.”
“Elliot wants me to connect with you now,” he said. “He’s coming through with lots to say,” George insisted. I was flustered but responded.
“He says he’s OK. He wants you to know he’s OK. And there’s something about green socks or lime-green shoes. Something green . . .”
There is no way George would have known this detail. Though I had posted the grim news about my loss on social media, I never made any reference to clothing—nor the socks of any color. I hadn’t found them yet. He had never met Elliot. I felt a shudder down to my marrow. It was startling and oddly comforting at the same time, but I was still in a general state of shock.
“It wasn’t karma. It wasn’t fate,” George typed in the messenger box. “That means it’s mechanical failure, user error, encounter with a vehicle or something like that. Elliot is saying, ‘Something went wrong.’”
I devoured every word.
The relentless pursuit of the details of Elliot’s demise consumes me. I am restless, distracted, and anxious most of the time. I have no way to make sense of it. I know that horrible things happen all the time. And yet, we live in a culture that runs on blame. We don’t have the tools to accept or process the unfathomable or the messy. So, I am caught, stuck, mired in this inextricable, mind-numbing place. Like trying to straighten out a Mobius strip or untangle a knot caught in the finest gold chain, I keep turning, twisting, and tugging, but the resolution is futile.
I hear my late mother’s voice in my head.
“Elaine, your best talent is your ability to untangle things. You can unravel anything,” I remember my mother saying as she took a puff from her extra-long Max cigarette. And she was right. Fixing things, figuring things out . . . or at least, trying is what I do—my modus operandi, probably since childhood. However, this clearly defies all my best solutioning skills.
When I was a girl, I learned to pull at every link of a tightly tangled necklace with the help of a fine silk needle and a magnifying glass, ultimately identifying the one strand or link that would loosen the angry snarl and let the wadded chain fall free. Oh, how I wish I had that needle now, but there is no such thing in my universe’s haystack. I must embrace the ambiguity. I wonder if I will ever know how to be in the world. The obsessive thoughts torture me day and night, awake and asleep, a haunting refrain I can’t seem to get out of my head.
Was there another driver on the ramp who caused him to swerve? Maybe going the wrong way? Was he cut off? Did one of the 911 callers who refused to provide their contact information see something or do something? Is someone covering up? Was he caught up in a manic episode? A migraine fog? Was it an accident? Did he misjudge the tight turn? Endless torture.
The minimally damaged bike was found still running, sitting peacefully on the ramp with the kickstand down. I saw it on the dash-camera video footage I requested from the city. How could this be? There are too many questions. In the Texas Health Resources records I requested, the EMTs reported that “a motorcyclist was cut off and forced off the road on LBJ ramp.” Everything contradicts, and nothing makes sense.
“He was going too fast and lost control. That’s it, mom,” the DPD traffic officer said with a smug smirk, “It’s not the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last.”
Don’t call me mom, I thought as I tempered my tearful response. The sanctimonious officers conducted no investigation. I was livid and still am. I cannot stand that my baby’s fate was summarily dismissed. It’s a forever knot buried in the depths of my heart, a heavy layer of everyday grief I must learn to carry. How I wish I could just let it go, let it be, and be at peace. Everyone says it takes time. If only I could find just the right thread to pull—or sign to see.
Like the green socks.
Elaine Gantz Wright 