Part 2: For 22 Years a Biker Left a Wrapped Christmas Eve Gift on My Mother’s Front Step. No Name, No Note, No Knock. She Knew. The Year He Didn’t Come Was the Year She Finally Opened Her Door
Most of what I know about Eldridge Copenhaver I learned in the eight months between a quiet conversation my mother had with me on her back porch in Two Harbors in the summer of 2024 and her death in March of 2025. The rest I have learned in the eight months since my sister found the box in the dresser drawer — through conversations with two of his old motorcycle club brothers, with a kind woman at a flower shop in Duluth where he had been a regular customer for forty-six years, and with a librarian at the Duluth Public Library where he had come every Wednesday afternoon to read the Duluth News Tribune.
He was born in Duluth on April 11th, 1947. His father was a longshoreman. His mother was a homemaker.
He attended Duluth Central High School. He graduated in 1965. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in the spring of 1966 at the age of nineteen. He served two tours in Vietnam between 1966 and 1968. He came home in October of 1968 — two months after my mother had married my father.
He had not, when he enlisted in 1966, known that my mother would marry someone else while he was overseas.
He had, by his own account to his road captain Frank Berglund forty-five years later, taken the news quietly. He had not made a scene. He had not asked her to leave my father.
He had simply, that October of 1968, gone to a small house off Lake Avenue in Duluth that his uncle had helped him secure with a low down payment, and he had moved in alone, and he had begun his quiet life.
He had bought a 1965 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide in 1969 with money from his discharge. He had, in 1972, adopted a black Lab mix named Sailor from the Duluth animal shelter who had lived with him for fourteen years.
He had worked for the next forty-three years as a longshoreman at the Duluth-Superior port. He had been steady, reliable, and quiet. He had retired in 2012 at age sixty-five.
He had never married.
He had, in his sixties and seventies, been in two long-term relationships — both with kind women he had met through the motorcycle club — neither of which had progressed to marriage.
His friends in the club — Frank Berglund and Roy Ostrom — told me, both separately, that they had always understood Eldridge had married a memory in 1968. They had not, in forty-six years of riding with him, known whose memory.
He had only, every December 24th for twenty-two years, ridden alone out to East Superior Street at 11:14 p.m. with a small wrapped gift in his saddlebag.
He had ridden home at 11:18 p.m.
Frank had asked him about it once, in 2002, after another brother had spotted him riding back from the East Superior direction late on a Christmas Eve.
Eldridge had told Frank, “Frank. It’s nothing. It’s just something I do. Don’t ask me about it again, brother. Please.”
Frank had not asked him about it again.
He had carried the question for sixteen years.
After Eldridge died in July of 2018, Frank had finally figured out who the woman was. He had figured it out by reading Eldridge’s high school yearbook, which had been left to him in Eldridge’s small estate. He had found, on a single page near the back, a yearbook signature in a careful 1965 girl’s handwriting that said: “Cope. You are my favorite human. Yours forever, Lily Bjornson.”
Lily Bjornson was my mother’s name before she married my father.
Frank had connected the dots.
He had not contacted my mother.
He had decided, at age seventy-three, that whatever had been between them was theirs.
He had let it sit.
He had, however, kept the small unfinished gift that Eldridge had been wrapping at his kitchen table on the morning of December 23rd, 2017, when the pancreatic cancer that had been silent in him until October had finally dropped him on his kitchen floor.
That last gift — the twenty-second one — was the one I delivered myself in March of 2025.
I will get to it.
Eldridge was diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma on October 17th, 2017.
By the time he had gone to the doctor for the unexplained back pain that had been bothering him for two months, the disease was at stage IV. The oncology team at Essentia Health in Duluth had told him he had perhaps six to nine months.
He had told two people: Frank, and his older sister Loretta who lived in Saint Paul.
He had not told my mother.
He had, however, on the morning of December 24th, 2017, in spite of being visibly thinner and visibly weaker and unable to ride for more than fifteen minutes without exhaustion — gotten on his Heritage Softail, ridden out to East Superior Street, parked at the curb, walked up to the front step of the house I had grown up in, set down the twenty-second wrapped gift on the welcome mat at 11:14 p.m. exactly, walked back to his bike, and ridden home.
That had been his last ride.
He had passed away on July 14th, 2018, in a hospice bed at Saint Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth, with his sister Loretta on one side of him and Frank on the other.
He had been seventy-one years old.
His funeral was held at a small Lutheran church on West First Street on July 19th, 2018.
My mother was, by then, eighty years old. She lived in Two Harbors. She did not, by my own knowledge at the time, see the obituary in the Duluth News Tribune.
I now know that she did.
She had read the obituary on page 7 of the local section on the morning of July 16th, 2018. She had sat with it for forty minutes. She had not told anyone in our family. She had not asked to be driven to the funeral. She had not, by my best understanding, gone.
She had simply folded the newspaper carefully, placed it in a small recycling bin, and gone inside.
She had not mentioned Eldridge’s name to me, my brother Peter, or my sister Margaret in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, or 2023.
She mentioned him for the first time on the back porch of her apartment in Two Harbors at 4:14 p.m. on Sunday August 11th, 2024.
She was eighty-six years old.
She had had a small health scare three weeks earlier — a urinary tract infection that had triggered some confusion. She had recovered, but the brush with the hospital had reminded her, by her own account that afternoon, “that I am not going to live forever, Eleanor.”
She had asked me to come up that Sunday with my husband Erik. We had driven up. Erik had gone for a walk along Agate Beach to give my mother and me time.
She had, with no preamble, looked at me across her small wicker porch table and said:
“Eleanor. There is something I want to tell you about a man I once knew.”
She told me everything.
About 1965, when she had been a junior at Duluth Central and Eldridge had been a senior. About the dance after a homecoming football game in October of that year, where they had first talked. About the two and a half years they had spent quietly seeing each other before he had enlisted in 1966. About the twenty-three letters she had numbered carefully and written him in Vietnam, that he had kept in a small wooden cigar box in his kitchen for forty-six years and that Frank Berglund would later give to me. About the day in May of 1968 when she had met my father, a kind, steady, careful man named Karl Whitcomb who had been six years older than her and had been working as a high school history teacher in West Duluth. About the way her own mother — my grandmother Margit — had pulled her aside in late June of 1968 and told her, “Lillian. You have not had a letter from Eldridge in nine weeks. The Marine Corps is not always good about letting families know quickly. He may not be coming home. You have to think about what life you want to live.” About the way she had, at twenty-two years old, decided that she could not wait forever for a boy who might not come back. About the way she had said yes to my father on a Tuesday evening at the end of June. About the way she had married him on August 12th, 1968. About the way Eldridge had come home eight weeks later — alive, intact, and three thousand miles away from the woman he had thought he was coming home to.
She told me about the only time she had seen him in person between 1968 and his death in 2018.
It had been November of 1972. She had been pushing me — at the time three years old — in a stroller down the sidewalk of Lake Avenue. Eldridge had come walking out of a small hardware store with a paper bag of nails and had stopped on the sidewalk. He had been twenty-five. She had been twenty-six. He had said, very quietly, “Lily.” She had said, “Cope.”
He had crouched down to my eye level. He had said, “Hi, sweetheart. What’s your name?”
I had said, by my mother’s account, “Eleanor.”
He had said, “Eleanor. That’s a beautiful name.”
He had stood up. He had looked back at my mother. He had said, “Lily. She’s beautiful. I’m — I’m glad. I’m glad for you.”
She had said, “Thank you, Cope.”
He had walked to his pickup truck. He had driven away.
That had been the last time, by her own account, that they had spoken to each other in person. November of 1972.
For twenty-four years between November of 1972 and December of 1996, they had not exchanged a single word.
Then on the morning of December 25th, 1996, at 7:14 a.m., my mother had opened the front door of our small Cape Cod house off East Superior Street to put out the empty milk bottle, and she had found a small wrapped gift on the welcome mat.
The tag had said For Lily — Merry Christmas — E.
She had known.
She had brought the gift inside.
She had put it, unopened, in the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser.
She had told no one.
She had said one quiet sentence to herself, after she had closed the dresser drawer, on the morning of December 25th, 1996.
She had said: “Cope. I never forgot you either.”
She said it again, by her own account on the porch in 2024, every December 25th for the next twenty-one years, after she had brought in each new gift and placed it in the dresser drawer.
Twenty-two years. Twenty-two sentences. Twenty-two unopened gifts.
I want to tell you what happened on Christmas Eve of 2018.
By that December, my father had been gone for twenty-one years. Eldridge had been gone for five months and ten days.
My mother had not told me, at any point in 2018, that Eldridge had died.
She had been living in her Two Harbors apartment for fifteen years. She had not been at the East Superior house since 2003.
But on December 24th, 2018, she had asked if she could come down and stay overnight in her old house for one Christmas Eve. I had said of course.
She had arrived at our house at 4:00 p.m. She had had dinner with us — me, my husband Erik, our two adult children Anna and Henrik, and my brother Peter who had driven up from Saint Paul. She had been quiet. She had gone to bed early — around 10:00 p.m. — saying she was tired from the drive.
I had assumed she was tired.
She had not slept.
She had stood in her old bedroom — which was now Anna’s bedroom, but Anna was at her boyfriend’s family Christmas that year — in her bathrobe, with the lights off, with the curtain pulled back two inches, looking at the front of the house, at 11:14 p.m.
She had been waiting for the rumble of a Harley.
It had not come.
She had stood at the window for the next thirty-three minutes.
At 11:47 p.m., she had finally pulled the curtain closed.
She had said one sentence to the empty bedroom.
“Cope. I am sorry.”
She had gone to bed.
She had slept poorly.
She had, the next morning at 7:14 a.m. — exactly the same time she had, for twenty-two consecutive years, opened the front door of that house to find a wrapped gift on the welcome mat — gone downstairs to the front door.
She had opened it.
The welcome mat had been empty.
She had stood there in her bathrobe.
She had cried for the first time about Eldridge in the entire twenty-two years she had been listening for his bike at 11:14 p.m.
She had cried for about forty-five minutes on the cold front step.
I had come downstairs at about 7:55 a.m. with a cup of coffee in my hand. I had found her sitting on the step in her bathrobe, with no shoes, with snow falling on her shoulders.
I had said, “Mom. What are you doing? You’ll catch pneumonia.”
She had not, in that moment, told me about Eldridge.
She had only said, “Eleanor. He’s gone, isn’t he.”
I had said, “Mom — who?”
She had said, “Help me up, Eleanor. Just help me up. We will not talk about it today.”
I had helped her up. I had brought her inside. I had wrapped her in a blanket. I had made her a fresh cup of coffee.
She had not mentioned Eldridge again until the porch in Two Harbors five years and seven and a half months later.
She had carried that morning — the empty welcome mat, the bathrobe, the snow — alone for almost six years.
After my mother’s funeral in March of 2025, my sister Margaret came to me with the small cardboard storage box she had found in the bottom drawer of my mother’s bedroom dresser.
She set the box on the kitchen table of my mother’s small Two Harbors apartment.
She opened it.
She took out twenty-two unopened, individually-wrapped Christmas gifts.
She set them in chronological order across the kitchen table — 1996 in the upper left, 2017 in the lower right — in five rows.
We sat at the table for several minutes without speaking.
Then Margaret said, “Eleanor. Did you know about this?”
I said, “Some of it. Mom told me last August.”
Margaret said, “Eleanor. Should we open them?”
I said, “Margaret. I think we have to.”
We opened them, one by one.
I will not list every contents of every gift. I will tell you a few:
1996 — A small carved wooden loon, about four inches tall, bought at a gift shop in Two Harbors.
2002 — A small leather-bound copy of The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett. My mother’s favorite book in college. She had told Eldridge about it in 1965 at a coffee shop on Superior Street.
2008 — A small folded handkerchief made of pale blue cotton. Embroidered in the corner, in careful white thread, with the letter L. Eldridge had bought a small embroidery kit at a fabric store in Duluth in 2007 — Frank confirmed this — and had taught himself to embroider for the express purpose of making this single handkerchief.
2014 — A small framed black-and-white photograph from 1965. Eldridge and my mother, at age eighteen and seventeen, sitting on the steps of Duluth Central High School, on a fall afternoon, both looking at each other. My mother was laughing. Eldridge was smiling. The photograph had been taken by my mother’s friend Doris Halvorson. My mother had given it to Eldridge at the end of senior year. He had carried it for forty-nine years before he had had it framed and given it back to her.
2017 — The last gift. The smallest. A small wooden box about three inches by two inches by one inch deep. Hand-carved. Inside the box, a single folded piece of paper.
The paper, in Eldridge’s careful handwriting, contained four words:
Lily. Thank you. — E.
Underneath those four words, in smaller writing:
I never forgot.
Margaret and I sat at the kitchen table.
Then Margaret said, “Eleanor. He never asked her for anything.”
I said, “No, Margaret. He never did.”
She said, “Eleanor. Twenty-two years.”
I said, “Yeah, Margaret. Twenty-two years.”
She said, “Eleanor. Mom never opened them. Why?”
I sat with that for a long time.
Then I said, “Margaret. I think she did not open them because she could not afford to. She was married to Dad. She loved Dad. She had built a whole life with Dad. If she had opened a single one of those gifts — if she had read a single one of those tags — she would have had to acknowledge, in some real way, that there was a separate small life inside her that she had been quietly carrying for forty-six years. She could not afford to acknowledge it. So she did not open them.”
Margaret said, “Eleanor. Then why did she keep them.”
I said, “Margaret. Because she could not afford to throw them away either.”
We sat with the twenty-two opened gifts for a long time.
Then I said, “Margaret. I want to take the last gift — the small wooden box, with the four words — back to Eldridge.”
We drove down to the small Lutheran cemetery on West First Street in Duluth on the afternoon of March 22nd, 2025.
We found Eldridge Copenhaver’s grave. A simple flat stone. Eldridge “Cope” Copenhaver — April 11, 1947 — July 14, 2018 — Beloved Brother. Faithful Friend. Marine.
I knelt down on the cold spring grass.
I placed the small carved wooden box on the headstone.
I opened the box.
I unfolded the small piece of paper.
I read aloud, into the cold March wind off Lake Superior, the four words and the small line underneath:
“Lily. Thank you. — E. I never forgot.”
I refolded the paper.
I placed it back in the box.
I closed the lid.
I left the box on the headstone.
I said, very quietly, into the wind:
“Mr. Copenhaver. She got it. She got every one of them. She never opened them — not while she was alive — but she got them. She never forgot you either. She told me. She said it once a year, every December 25th for twenty-two years, alone in her bedroom. Cope. I never forgot you either. She wanted you to know. I am here, telling you, on her behalf.”
Margaret was standing about ten feet behind me.
She had her hand over her mouth.
I stood up.
I walked back to her.
We drove home.
The twenty-two gifts are now in a small cherry-wood display cabinet in my living room in Duluth.
The cabinet has glass doors. My husband Erik built it for me last June — exactly the size needed to hold twenty-two small Christmas gifts of varying shapes.
Each gift is on a small shelf in the cabinet, with a small typed label underneath the shelf, listing the year.
On the front of the cabinet there is a small brass plate.
It says, in simple block letters:
FOR LILY — FROM E. — 1996 to 2017
Above the cabinet, on the wall, is a small framed handwritten note in my mother’s hand. The note had been folded inside a small envelope addressed to me, in the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser, underneath the box of gifts.
The note said, in part:
“Eleanor. If you find this, it means I have died and you have found the dresser drawer. The drawer has gifts in it. They are from a man named Eldridge Copenhaver. He passed away in July of 2018. I read the obituary. I did not go to the funeral. I have wanted to tell you about him for many years. I told you a little of it on my back porch.
I want you to know that I loved your father. I loved your father more than anything. I built a life with him. I would do it again.
I also want you to know that some hearts are big enough to hold more than one love at a time. Some loves are quiet. Some loves are loud. Some loves last fifty years and never get acknowledged out loud. I had two. Your father, who I built my whole life with. And Eldridge, who I did not. Both were real. Both mattered. Both are mine.
Eleanor. Please put the gifts somewhere you can see them. Do not throw them away. They were given by a man who loved me carefully and asked nothing in return for twenty-two years.
I never deserved that level of patience. He gave it to me anyway.
Some loves do not need to be answered to be real.
— Mom”
The framed note hangs above the cabinet.
Anyone who comes to my house can see it, if they ask.
Most people do not ask.
The few who have asked — my children Anna and Henrik, two of my closest friends, my sister-in-law, a neighbor of forty years — have heard a short version of this story.
I have written this longer version because I think the story deserves to be told all the way through.
My mother is buried next to my father in the Whitcomb family plot at a small cemetery off Skyline Parkway in Duluth.
She had asked, in her will, for that.
She had also asked, in the same handwritten note in the dresser drawer, for one other specific thing.
She had asked that the small framed black-and-white photograph from 1965 — Eldridge and her on the steps of Duluth Central High School, the one he had carried for forty-nine years before framing and giving back to her in 2014 — be placed in her hands in the casket.
We did that.
She is buried next to my father, holding a 1965 photograph of herself and a boy who was not him.
My father, in his life, would not have minded.
He had known, by my mother’s careful telling at the porch in 2024, about Eldridge from the first month they were dating in May of 1968. She had told him on their third date. He had said, “Lily. I know about Cope. I know what you and he had. I am not asking you to forget him. I am asking you to build a life with me. Both of those things can be true.”
She had told me this at age eighty-six on her porch.
She had said, “Eleanor. Your father was a better man than the world realized. He let me hold both. He never made me choose. He never asked me to throw the boy away. He just asked me to build a life with him. And we did.”
She had paused.
She had said, “Eleanor. Karl was the love of my life. Cope was the boy of my heart. They are not the same. They were both real.”
That was, more or less, the last big thing my mother told me before she died.
I have been sitting with it for sixteen months.
I am, at fifty-eight years old, beginning to understand it.
I think I will be understanding it for the rest of my life.
If this story moved you — follow the page. There are more men out there who left small wrapped gifts on welcome mats every Christmas Eve for twenty-two years. More women who heard them come and watched them go from behind two-inch curtain gaps in dark bedrooms. More dresser drawers that hold things their owners could not afford to open. There are more stories the world doesn’t see — and I will keep telling them as long as someone keeps reading.
