Living Life on Your Terms
Honoring Patty Elam
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Living Life on Your Terms
Honoring Patty Elam
Patty Elam was a pioneer. That was the first word her daughter Sabriya reached for when asked to describe her mother, and it captures her essence: Patty lived life on her own terms, always.
That spirit shaped even her final arrangements. When the time came, her family chose Earth Funeral, a return to soil that felt deeply aligned with how Patty had lived.
She grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, surrounded by people who would stay there for generations. Patty had other plans. She built her life in New York City, raised two daughters there, and never looked back. She was, as Sabriya puts it, “one of the toughest ladies I knew.”
She was honest to the point of telling you exactly what was on her mind. Fiercely generous. Loyal in the shirt-off-her-back way. And funny, always, right up to the end.
She made life grow
Patty's connection to the natural world wasn't a label she wore. It was how she lived. Growing up near Pennsylvania farmland, she carried that instinct with her into city life. Her New York apartment was filled with plants.
She would spread newspaper across the living room floor, haul out the soil, and repot them right in the middle of everything.
"She meticulously tended to them," Sabriya recalls.
Over the years, Patty propagated those plants and gave clippings to everyone she loved. There are “Patty plants” in homes and offices across her family’s world now.
Always a project going
Her hands were never still. She knitted blankets, made rugs, crafted macrame, and always had a project in the works.
She cooked the same way: intuitively, generously, and often late into the night. Her cookie pie was a staple at family gatherings.
She was a firm believer in giving things a second life. Almost anything could be repurposed. For years, she volunteered every Saturday at a local thrift shop: showing up, rolling up her sleeves, making it count.
That same instinct to make, nurture, and grow extended most fully to children.
For years, Patty ran a daycare out of her home. She read to kids, made homemade play dough, and hunted for toys at thrift shops.
"Planting seeds looked like spending time with kids," Sabriya says.
Her sacred place
Patty had been born landlocked, hours from the nearest ocean. It didn't matter.
"Water was her God," Sabriya says simply. Every summer, she took her daughters to Riis Beach on the edge of New York City. It's not a gentle shore. The waves are strong, not for the faint of heart. That's where her daughters learned to swim and navigate life's riptides.
As she got older, the beach remained her place of prayer, her place of peace. It was the spot where, as her daughters wrote, sand and salt joy reset the soul.
Patty's Memory Garden
The family chose to have six containers of soil, each with a purpose.
At Sabriya’s home, there will be a memory garden with a view, anchored by a jujube or pawpaw tree; maybe both. Patty loved Chinatown, and jujubes, Chinese dates, felt like “Nana fruits.”
Some soil will return to Pennsylvania, to the cemetery where Patty’s parents are buried, so she can be near them again.
And some will go to the ocean, because that was always what Patty wanted.
"I think all three of those fulfill all the parts of her," Sabriya says.
On Sabriya's desk, in a macrame planter she's kept since she can remember, a clipping from one of Patty's corn plants, propagated, passed on, and older than Sabriya herself.
Patty Elam was a mother, a maker, and a force of life.
She had a way with words, not because she remembered the exact proverb, but because she made her own. They'd catch you off guard, make you laugh, and somehow say exactly what needed to be said.
And now, in new ways, Patty continues to nurture what she loved.
More Lasting Legacies
A Perennial Peace
At 65, Kimberly embraces human composting as a way to nurture her beloved garden after death, finding peace and a sense of continuity in becoming part of the Earth she tends.
Finding the Courage to Summit
After her brother Preston's passing, Alyssa honors his adventurous spirit by taking his soil on challenging hikes, leaving pieces of him at summits he would have loved to conquer.
Eternal Love in the Garden
After 53 years of marriage, Emily honors Wayne's love for nature by transforming him into soil, nurturing their cherished circle garden and planning a new memorial space that captures his adventurous spirit.
