Have you ever seen the gravedigger cry?

Her mother laid her to rest in a beautiful pink and silver coffin. Her father picked out a black garbage bag.

A beautiful house awaits Ellie in Texas.

Stationed by a lake, it stands two stories tall and beckons her towards the brand new playground in the backyard. The weather is muggy, but the nature that blooms from it is beautiful. Long grasses swaying in the wind. Bodies of water you can’t help but be tempted to skip stones on.

It would have been a good life.

Anything would have been a better life than such an early death.

Ellie’s brand new playground.

Even though we were coming in from different cities, there was another group on the same flight as me headed to the funeral. In some way, it helped to know I wasn’t the only person shouldering such unbearable heaviness on this random Southwest Airlines 747. 

The only other time I went to Houston, it was to visit my uncle. This was a couple years before he met Chrystal and back before I knew he was someone to be scared of. It was a twisted sense of deja vu to be walking through the same terminal under such different circumstances.

My aunt picked me up from the airport and together we headed to Chrystal’s mom’s house. I remember Jared showing me photos of it before, how he had once been welcomed in by a large collage with pictures of our family members hanging up. Obviously, that was long gone. Now the walls were adorned by Ellie’s precious face over and over and over again. Though it too would have served as a welcome, it was now a memorial.

There’s nothing comforting to say to someone whose toddler was brutally killed, no laying of hands strong enough to bestow strength. Still, my aunt and I embraced both Chrystal and her mother with all our might. I thought back to what a family friend had poignantly said a few weeks earlier, right after Ellie’s body had been found. She had pledged us all to walk alongside Chrystal, carrying as much of the burden as we could shoulder, if it could even lighten her own load by a morsel.

Our brief visit ended when one of her dear friends arrived to drive Chrystal to the funeral home. Out of necessity, it was to be a closed casket and she wanted to say goodbye to her baby face-to-face one last time.

Ellie's smile through the years.

The next morning, I joined a large crowd in the same room of the same funeral parlor where Ellie’s grandfather was memorialized eight years earlier. I understood why and where we were all gathered. I saw the pink, child-sized casket in the front of the room. Still, my mind could not accept that it actually contained her body. That sense of disbelief would persist for some time. When they later lowered the casket into the ground I would think again, “But don’t you only do that when someone’s in there?”

Though he endured with the utmost professionalism, I noticed the gravedigger take a moment to weep quietly in between burial tasks. I had noticed the funeral home staff doing the same when I went into the back to ask if there were any extra programs. It would take a few more weeks for me to fully break down, an otherwise nondescript workday in which I suddenly started sobbing at my desk.

In addition to a local pastor, Ellie was eulogized by her mother, grandmother, uncle, and a small assortment of family friends. It took tremendous strength for each to speak and share their vulnerability along with their stories. The amount of love her surviving relatives shared was almost hard to reconcile with the level of hatred her own father had displayed against her. She was lucky to have them as counterweights.

What I remember most from Chrystal’s time at the podium was her story of taking Ellie strawberry picking. They had first went to a cherry orchard and, though Ellie was tall for her age, there wasn’t anything low enough that she could pick herself. The strawberry farm was round number two, and it was presented as a mistake of sorts— something that Chrystal would have changed to make sure that Ellie had a better experience. I just saw the effort that went into making sure that her daughter experienced joy and built her self-confidence.

Chrystal and Ellie at the strawberry picking farm.

Ellie’s grandmother had been confident that, at 78, her three-year-old grandbaby would outlive her. In preparation, she had written a beautiful letter for Ellie to read when she reached eighteen. We were the ones to hear it instead, absorbing both the love imbued into each word and the pain behind its early recitation.

Ellie’s relationship with her grandmother was truly something special. Mama Grandma woke up each morning and waited for Ellie to follow suit, though her time zone was two hours behind. They facetimed every single morning and every single night. Jared never gave permission for Ellie to visit Texas, so Mama Grandma flew out for frequent California visits. Ellie was her entire world.

Shopping for Ellie was one of Mama Grandma’s favorite pastimes, and she had eagerly pre-purchased cute shoes and clothes across the next four years of sizes. They talk about the saddest short story: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” I posit that it’s even sadder to donate unworn clothing from a child who almost grew big enough to fit them.

A drawing that I made in group therapy.

Ellie’s uncle had similarly found creative ways to spend time with her from across the country. He spoke of facetime hide-and-seek and, in true little brother fashion, teaming up with Ellie to play pranks on Chrystal. As a father himself, he also talked about the aspirations that siblings have for their children to have strong relationships with one another. There were many childhood memories that he had expected Ellie and his own son to have the chance to replicate, like causing backseat mischief during car rides.

I still think about one of the points he made frequently, that things like this either bring people closer to faith or pull people away. I don’t know where I stand with that. I don’t know what happens to us after we die. But something like this makes me desperately wish that there were at least two outcomes to siphon us all into, and that Ellie has been brought to a very different place than her father. Regardless of the afterlife, I at least know that to be the case in terms of memory.

One of the many bouquets at the funeral service.

I believe my uncle thought he could hide Ellie’s body so well that she’d never be found. He’d have the spectacle of a public suicide, but we would never be able to definitively prove that he killed her. His supporters would have just enough wiggle room to delude themselves into championing his innocence. The rest of us would know deep down what happened but never be able to fill in the blanks.

Jared forced Chrystal to work long hours by refusing to provide any financial support for their child, then tried to paint her as an uncaring and aloof mother. He said she felt no love for her daughter at all. It was all lies. He put that baby in a dumpster. He thought we would never know so he dropped the act of pretending to be human.

I don’t know who it was that found Ellie in the landfill, but I feel for them deeply. I see my brain’s depiction of her broken body in my dreams, but at least I get to wake up and return to a reality in which I didn’t. They were just going about the workday an hour away from where a young girl disappeared. They didn’t ask to be traumatized for life. I hope that along their own healing journey, they’re able to recognize that they gave us a great gift. Because Ellie was not meant to be found and were not meant to have answers.

After she was discovered, her mother tried to beautify the landfill with flowers because she couldn’t bear the thought of her baby spending time in such a place. Her father thought it was sufficient as is.

Her mother laid her to rest in a beautiful pink and silver coffin encased in a glittering, engraved burial vault. Her father picked out a black garbage bag for the same purpose.

Heartless bastard.

Time move differently now and I sometimes have gaps when I try to place things and events. I know that some time has passed since the funeral. Whether it’s been weeks or months is beyond me. If I had written this right away I may have remembered more details, but I also would have ended this entry with the tone of utter despair. The takeaway would have been that babies don’t belong in dumpsters and they don’t belong in the ground either.

Since the service, I have found the smallest source of strength from its existence.

The funeral was an act of defiance.

The devaluation of Ellie was meticulously planned but it did. not. work. Her goodbye was filled with love, not hate. When someone laid their hands on her for the final time, it was the embrace of her mother and not the brutality of her father.

Ellie was laid to rest among her family. She’s not going to be alone or stuck in the city her father spitefully tried to trap her in. He said he’d found a loophole to prevent her from moving to Texas with her mother. Instead, she will never set foot in California again.

In the end, his manipulation and obfuscation fell flat. We are all left deal with the horrors of the truth, but also have the ability to share Ellie’s story. Her suffering will not be shrouded in secrecy. Her light will shine regardless.