To Jake With Love

There are just some things in this world that make you feel like the biggest wimp around. Things like marathons, childbirth without epidurals, Jed's family (my loss x 3 = their life right now. Nice.)

And then there's Jake.

When this all started, I called Jake in hysterics and begged him to fix it. Begged him to find reboyfriend. Jed's best friend, Jake, understands aviation. It's in his blood like it's in Jed's. He's wicked smart. He's smooth. He knows people. He understands who to call about stuff like dropped radio contact, and what landing technique Reboyfriend would have used in which weather pattern and why, and when, and how. Reboyfriend's family had it all under control, they had done everything possible, but I didn't understand. I felt like if we put Jake in the mix, everything would be OK.

Jake kept me updated. Jake calmed me down. "Kirssen," he said in the relaxed, board-bum way he's pronounced my name for nine years, "You and I have both been up in that plane with him. We both know that Jed can land that plane in anything. Just try to stay calm, OK?" I calmed down. When I was in a slouch on the floor after I got that phone call that Jed had been confirmed dead, wailing and bawling, the call from Jake came. I quieted down, he calmed me.

I've never heard Jed refer to anyone as his best friend before, besides Jake and me. But more Jake than me (durr). Jed barked at a local Realtor once who was trying to undermine Jake (also a Realtor) during Jed's and my home hunt this year. I was fascinated at Jed's protectiveness. "Buddy, he's my best friend. Try me." Jed was mellow and smooth, but he could boom his words if needed, and he boomed that to the douchebag. It gave me chills the way he said that about Jake, and I'll never get that out of my mind.

My confidence in Jed's bromance with Jake was reinforced one day when De'dy happened to be up in SLC (from their home in St. George), and invited me to go paddle boarding with her and Brooks. Jake didn't come into town with her, he had stuff to do. I texted ReBF that I would be paddleboarding with De'dy that night. He texted back "sounds fun" and held out a few hours before calling. "So, you're going out with De'dy? Cool. So, is Jake in town, or..." He was worried Jake had come to town without immediately calling him to hang out. As tough as he was, he couldn't disguise the hurt and bewilderment in his voice. It was like when little boys get left out of camping trips or sporting events but try to act curious, while also trying to hide that they care. Nothing could be more endearing than this.

While I was curled up in a ball, sobbing and gagging on food, Jake sat down at kitchen tables to navigate a way through Jed's two businesses to pay their drivers, and bill their clients for unpaid loads. He spent an entire day in meetings with Jed's mom and the state, laboring tediously to get her added to business accounts only Jed and his deceased father were on, so that she could make her mortgage payment. So that she could sleep at night.

He tracked through all Jed's bank accounts to find any shred of life insurance to get to Jed's mom.

He packed Jed's belongings and hauled them to Lehi to Jed's sister. He got the trucks moved somewhere safe, and kept the trucks running, to keep the businesses going until Jed's mother could decide what to do with them. He privately and extensively consulted with my mom over a number of phone calls, to discuss how to handle me, and how much they felt I should know about the accident.

He tactfully but forcefully dealt with anyone trying to exploit the family. He protected me from the things I shouldn't hear, and gently delivered the news I needed to. The news I only wanted to hear coming from him. In the middle of this, he managed to scan through 12 years' worth of Reboyfriend's tireless journals for some of the most moving and eloquent passages I've ever heard, and composed a life sketch to deliver at the funeral - short enough to fit into a triple funeral, but concise enough to say what needed to be said.

He's tall. People listen to him because there is something in how he speaks that commands your ear. Or is it that people listen to him because he could tell a story about wiping off a countertop or watching paint dry, and make it hilarious?

When I couldn't go to our house alone, my mom and aunts and sisters and cousins all took turns accompanying me to gather things I needed while I stayed with family. Of course, he was there, taking care of something or another that nobody else thought to. On the way home, all the girls would laugh about how good-looking he was, how they felt like cougars around him, how beautiful his wife obviously is, and how they'd get all giggly and nervous around him. It never occurred to me to see him that way. Probably because I was always being blinded by Jed's perfection while Jake was yelling at us from the bathroom about how he just got the biggest pee shiver EVER.

I haven't been as in touch with him lately as we need to be and hopefully will be soon. I really hope that this is because he is ending his one-month marathon of keeping-everything-together-for-everyone-else with some form of nap, or meal, or backrub, or one night's sleep - or just a day on the lake in Jed's honor. I hope he gets to start HIS turn to grieve. Oh, I forgot my favorite part - he's in the middle of moving and settling into a new house. Of course he is. Why not? He went, like, a week without seeing his kids. His gorgeous, patient wife De'dy stood by him, by me, by everyone, like a rock. I guess behind every amazing man is the woman making them that way.

I want to go on and on, to tell the stories about him that would make you laugh and love him like everyone else does. How, ugh, he and Jed took me and De'dy to some STUPID haunted forest the first Halloween we were all dating back in 2000, and the chainsaw guys made me and De'dy scream bloody murder and trip all over ourselves to get away, and Jake and Jed were laughing so hard at us that they were bent over, going hoarse, and would break the silence on the car ride back by spilling into more laughter. We were less amused.

Or that same year, how we tried watching the Exorcist and for whatever reason, laughed throughout most of it. You know somebody is a funny mother****er when they can have everybody busting up at The Exorcist. The guy that makes you laugh at Exorcist is the guy who will most likely hold you all together when your mutual best friend dies and you have to fall apart.

How everything had to be about something naked. Jake and Reboyfriend were fitness trainers at Dixie together, and therefore readily abused their employee access to the fitness center to let us all break into the campus pool late at night. Everything had to involve naked something, like naked breaking-in to the pool, or naked water-weener riding, or naked chasing you. And when naked breaking into the Dixie fitness center pool, for whatever reason it meant naked aftershowers - but only in the women's locker room. Just because they could, and because they wanted to know what it looked like. Maybe it was because the girls' locker room had individual shower stalls or something. Because after a night of nude frolicking across campus property, they needed a little privacy. Who knows. We didn't have many secrets, did we. Jake would stay at the house any time he had an early load out of SLC the next morning. A couple months ago, Jake busted through my bedroom door and pretty much walked in on us. It wasn't like we were fornicating or anything, but still. "Hey guys. What are you doin. Havin happy times?" We stared back, and he just kept walking in and climbed up on the bed. There we all were in bed together. He proceeds to talk about this load or that flatbed or some dirtbike or something. It was so romantic. For the two of them.

He and Jed would speak Portugese to each other on our double dates back in the day when they were only a year off their missions, and De'dy and I would go from annoyed to furious, then Jed and Jake would sit and gripe about "brawling" with us. When Jed and I first went to dinner to catch up after all these years, Jake was the first person Jed called in the care on the way home. The first question he said Jake asked was "Dude how did she look?" Vintage Jake. I wanna tell all the stories, because after losing it once again today, I thought of him and how he held it together and took care of everyone else first. I feel like everyone needs to know him.

In all of this missing plane crap, this death crap, this funeral-planning crap, this business-saving crap, I never once saw Jake lose grace, lose composure, lose patience (Me? All three. Multiple times. Publicly. With much mucus and incoherence). If it weren't for Jake, I'd have been a bigger mess than I was.

I guess I just want to publicly thank Jake for being so strong, so patient, so helpful, and so selfless. I want to thank his family for giving him up to us for this. Even his father, who honored Jed and his dad and brother with a fly-over, just like Jed did for his grandpa Floyd a couple years ago in the same cemetery.

It's not like they were life partners. (They would be the best life partners though, huh De'dy - if it weren't for you and me, they'd be the next best bets for each other). I know Jed wasn't Jake's whole future or Jake's chance at children. But Jake's loss was as massive as mine. And he was a stud through it all. I'm just amazed. That's all.

Thanks, Jake, for being the friend you were to Jed. He loved and loves you and I couldn't pick a more entertaining bromace.