A NEW LIFE, FAR FROM PHILADELPHIA

Philadelphia molded Meredith Elizalde. It’s where she was born and raised, where she launched her teaching career, where she gave birth to her son, Nicolas, and with him built countless memories.

But it is also the city that ruined her life — the place where her only child was shot and killed by a stray bullet while leaving his high school football game in September 2022. She fears she will never shake that scene: running up a hill toward her bleeding son, and holding him in her arms as he took his last breath.

Philadelphia, she said, is the city that gave her everything, then ripped it away.

And now, she is saying goodbye.

A week and a half ago, Elizalde, 39, packed up her belongings and moved more than 2,300 miles away to Missoula, Mont. On Monday, she is to begin working toward a doctorate in international conservation at the University of Montana. That’s a subject Nick hoped to pursue.

The cross-country move means she will live alone for nearly the first time in her adult life, in a town she has never visited, where snow falls into late May and black bear warnings come by text. She doesn’t know what her life will look like six months from now, she said, and that’s OK. All she knows, she said, is that her life in Philadelphia “died with Nick” — and she has to leave.

“I lost my city. I lost my career. I lost my motherhood,” she said. “I lost everything.”

As Elizalde sees it, she and Nick are running toward a new life together still, to a place where his spirit will be free to frolic through the fields of wild daisies, to soar among snow-capped mountains, and swim alongside rainbow trout.

“This is the beginning of what the rest of my life will be,” she said. “I am being reborn.”

Elizalde knew early on that her child would be remarkable.

She remembers being 22, sitting in his Snoopy-themed nursery, watching with awe as her son, Nicolas Gabriel, at just 2 months old started sleeping through the night.

Nick’s father, Manuel, was present in his life, shaping the child’s love of Mexico and Latino culture. But Meredith raised the boy largely on her own.

She had learned the strength of a single mother from watching her own. In 1988, when Elizalde was 3 years old, her father died of a heart attack. He was 36. Her mother had just given birth to their youngest child, and was still in the maternity wing of the hospital when he collapsed. Her mother returned to their Aston, Delaware County, home with a newborn, two toddlers, and a funeral to plan.

Elizalde saw how in the face of an immense loss, her mother’s love never wavered.

When Elizalde became a teacher, it was in part so she could spend the summers traveling with Nick. She saved through the year for boat trips through the clear blue waters of Key West and tours through Turkish mosques and Greek isles.

These travels helped shape Nick. Curious and gentle, he studied different religions — encouraged by his mother, who wanted him to choose a faith that spoke to him. She had done this herself as a young woman, studying Islam through her teen years before fully dedicating herself to the faith about 10 years ago.

He cared deeply about the environment, especially the ocean and sea turtles, and picked up trash during his walks on the beach. His favorite animal was the wolf.

He marched against gun violence, and for Black Lives Matter and abortion rights. When applying for high schools, he wrote an essay about Cesar Chavez, the late labor and civil rights leader.

Still, at heart, he was a boy from Delco who loved the Philadelphia 76ers and Eagles, and relished nights watching a Marvel or Star Wars movie with his parents.

While he grew up in Havertown, Nick wanted to attend high school in Philadelphia. He told his mother he needed to diversify his experiences and make new friends. He chose Walter B. Saul High, an agricultural sciences school in Roxborough, and started as a freshman in August 2022. He and his mother were to move into the city that fall.

Because Saul doesn’t have an athletics program, Nick joined the junior varsity football team at nearby Roxborough High. On Sept. 27 of that year he showed up for a scrimmage at Roxborough, donning his new cleats and No. 62 jersey.

He never made it home.

About 4:30 p.m., as the game wrapped up and parents and students filed off the field, six young men with guns were waiting in the parking lot inside a dark-green Ford Explorer. They had driven from North Philly, police would say, and were on the hunt for a 17-year-old who’d attended the game.

They spotted their target crossing the street as Nick and his teammates headed toward the locker room. Five shooters jumped out and sprayed more than 60 rounds at the group before speeding away.

Five teens, ages 14 to 17, were struck. The intended target, police said, took nine bullets, but survived. And then there was Nick, 14, hit once in the chest. He fell to the ground, his shoulder pads cast to his side, as his teammates scattered.

Elizalde was near the field when she heard the shots, and started running toward the gunfire. Before she even saw Nick, she said, she knew.

Her left hamstring tore almost completely as she sprinted up the hill. She fell over several times as she tried to make it to her son.

When she finally reached him, she held him in the dirt, her fingers touching his face.

“I love you, and I’m here,” she cried to him. “Nick, Nick! I’m here!”

A police officer scooped mother and son up and rushed them toward Einstein Medical Center. Before they could arrive, Nicolas lost consciousness. His mother held him tightly as he took his last breath.

Police quickly arrested five young men, ages 15 to 21, who they say were responsible for the shooting. The suspects remain in custody awaiting trial. One shooter remains at large.

For weeks after Nick’s death, Elizalde refused to eat. She couldn’t stand without help. Friends and family visited with condolences, but she could barely hear them. She remembers little of her conversations with reporters.

Then, as Elizalde slowly came to, she said, she was filled with rage.

“I wanted to fight everyone,” she said. “I wanted to fight the legal system, the shooters, their families, the city, the school district.”

She knew she could not return to teaching in Philly, she said — a job challenging enough without grief. So she threw herself into gun violence prevention work, speaking to legislators and crowds across the state. But telling the story of her son’s death — reducing him over and over to his murder — weighed on her. Before and after each event, she said, she was nearly catatonic. It wasn’t sustainable.

Her body was physically giving up, as well. Her hamstring was so severely frayed that even after eight months of physical therapy, doctors told her she would never again run. Through her grief she developed hives and weird cravings. She still experiences near-constant aches in her stomach, back, and neck.

“It’s like there’s a knife stuck in your chest,” she said. “Everything goes wrong in your body. Your sleep, your appetite, your moods.”

On top of that, she was growing angry at the money that was sitting in her bank account — savings meant to help buy a house for her and Nick.

So with that money, she spent last year traveling alone. She visited Georgia and Massachusetts and the beaches of Florida. She flew to Dubai and Morocco, where she attended a retreat for Muslim women.

For the first time since Nick’s death, she said, she felt free. She knew what she had to do.

“It cleared everything when I came home,” she said. “I didn’t feel so angry. I felt Allah was calling me to conservation in honor of Nick.”

She started working toward a new version of herself.

She donated most of her clothes, and now dresses more boldly and colorfully to make herself feel better. She dyes her hair a lighter blond. She moved out of her apartment last year, and in with her mother. She even has tattoos, or as she calls them, “armor” — a wolf on her ribs, and a series of Arabic quotes on her ankles, including Nick’s name and “love is for souls, not bodies.”

Therapy has been life-changing, she said. Every week, she has an eye movement desensitization and reprocessing session, a form of treatment that uses rapid eye movements to process trauma. It’s so intense, she said, that she will occasionally vomit.

But nature has been her greatest healer. It is in the quiet, in the rustling of the trees and the songs of birds, she said, that Nick’s spirit speaks to her.

“I can hear him better,” she said.

After her trip to Morocco, she researched conservation programs and came across Montana’s. She had never visited the state, but longed to be somewhere far away, near rushing rivers and fresh air, and where she was not surrounded by reminders of Nick’s death.

She was accepted on a full scholarship.

But wanting to leave Philadelphia, and actually doing it, were two entirely different tasks. She spent months sorting through her and Nick’s belongings, forcing herself to part with most of his things, as well as her own. She found a fully furnished apartment.

Ultimately, she held on to about a dozen of Nick’s favorite items: two of his stuffed animals, an oyster shell he collected, a book on wolves, his school backpack, and notebooks.

“In Philadelphia, it’s me and Nick’s murder,” she said. “This is me and Nick moving to Montana.”

In the month leading up to her departure, Elizalde visited some of her favorite places in Philadelphia. She returned to Franklin Fountain, the Old City ice cream shop, for a sweet breakfast treat, as she and Nick had shared each summer before school. She stopped by Saul High, to see the cows and sheep and walk the hallways. She had a pool party with her closest friends.

She spent hours in the Garden of Love, a serene space in Upper Chichester Township that memorializes children who were murdered. Nick and his mother used to visit when he was a child to honor the dead. Now, he has a plot of his own.

But mostly, she reflected on the past and worked to accept that she doesn’t entirely know what the future holds.

“Once the bottom falls out, you accept you don’t know what’s going to happen five minutes from now,” she said. “I can only see what’s directly in front of me. I’m doing what I believe God is commanding me to do, but he is only showing me bread crumbs.”

She’s interested in studying the way conservation and religion intersect; the relationship that people have with the land, and how God inspires them to care for it. She hopes to eventually move out of the U.S. — to Mexico, Zanzibar, the Coco Islands, maybe somewhere along the Indian Ocean.

On the morning of Aug. 15, she sat on the floor of her childhood home, surrounded by her belongings. The RV she and her family had rented to drive to Montana fell through at the last minute. Now, her mother, her brother and sister were squeezing into an SUV and shipping the rest of her things later.

Her mother asked why she needed so many hats: “I can’t be in Montana without hats, Mom!”

Her older sister, Marge, told her she was packing too many pairs of shoes.

“I’m an outdoorsman now!” she proclaimed. “I need to look cool and stylish so I can make friends at school.”

They finished loading the car and got in. The wind chime on the front porch, engraved with Nick’s name, whispered a low melody with the breeze.

“Nick is talking,” she said.

In the front seat she clutched her son’s photo. She wanted it nearby so he could see Philadelphia in the rearview mirror as they pulled away.

She shut the door, and her brother, Jack, started to drive forward — toward Montana, toward a new version of herself, of Nick.

She didn’t look back.