Twice a week, Ellie Tourney eats lunch on a stone bench near her son’s grave.
She doesn’t want her youngest boy to feel like he has been forgotten.
Nearly a year has passed since Jonathan Tourney and Taylor Orlowski were killed on Christmas weekend when the speeding SUV they were in with four other teens crashed on a dark road in Allegheny County’s North Park.
Jonathan, 14, a Pine-Richland High School freshman, chased adrenaline. He whizzed around the football gridiron as a wide receiver — and was bulking up in hopes of leading his team one day as quarterback.
Taylor was 18, a nationally ranked equestrian from Beaver County. Her private life revolved around the two horses she trained with at an elite North Hills stable. Her future looked unimaginably bright.
Little feels settled for Jonathan’s and Taylor’s families, particularly two mothers overwhelmed by the profound push and pull between mourning and moving on.
A trial is scheduled to start Monday against Aiden Saber, the 18-year-old driver charged in the teens’ deaths on Dec. 23, 2023.
Ellie Tourney, 54, of Richland, still talks and writes to Jonathan at his gravesite, still mothering the son whose death consumes her.
“I just want to let him know we didn’t leave him,” she said, “that he’s not alone.”