05/19/2026
These were taken in February. Tomorrow is Elias’s visitation. I am heartbroken for this family.
When you design a space for a child, you get the privilege of seeing the world through the lens of wonder again. Through play. Through curiosity and color. Through God’s eyes.
Children don’t care about trends or impressing anyone. They simply love what they love and my job becomes translating that feeling into a space they can fully live inside of.
Elias loved purple. Soccer. Being outside. Movement. Light. Life. Spider man.
When I volunteered to design him and his brother’s room in December, his cancer was clear. Usually December was the month they would find out it had returned, but this time we were able to give him a new safe space to heal.
He made it to his 7th birthday, his golden birthday. And somehow, in only seven years, he reminded more people how to actually live than most do in a lifetime.
After finding out his cancer came back, we went back and took photos of him and his beautiful family outside, playing, doing the things they loved most.
Looking back on these now, there’s a strange feeling of peace knowing pieces of who he was lived inside that room. The purple soccer lamp. Ronaldo. The colors pulled from nature. Outdoors brought in. He still had joy because he was fully present.
This project found me at a time where I was disconnecting from why I started designing in the first place. I had become too in my head with balancing a business and designing vs. designing with my heart. Designing scared spaces literally healed me.
Elias and his family reminded me.
The spaces we create matter because life is fragile. Because people are fragile. Because we are all living knowing, somewhere deep down, that our time here is temporary.
I think if we remembered that more often, we would love people softer. We would stop performing. We would spend less time trying to fit in and more time becoming fully alive.
Elias lived the way he loved Spider-Man. Fearless. Hopeful. Full of wonder. Still finding joy even while carrying pain.
And I believe that’s why God places souls like Elias in our path. To wake us back up to what life is really about.
