Jake's Reconciliation with Death

How to Die Fulfilled

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Tom had never let Jake down. Even when the going got tough, he had never dropped Jake.

For Jake, it is real to this day. Jake would hear Tom grunt under his weight. Jake's frail body would be wrapped around Tom's beefy back. Jake's feet would dangle. Tom would clutch Jake's knees and hold them firmly against his waist. Jake would grab at his brother's surprisingly small shoulders, locking his thin arms around Tom's neck. Jake would dig his chin into the back of Tom's neck, trusting he would not fall.

Tom was three years younger than Jake, yet, as a seven-year-old, he could haul Jake on his back along the dusty cow paths and across the rippling creek in the Back Forty, a forested area of the family's Wisconsin dairy farm.

Jake could feel Tom's small feet search tentatively for the next step in the dirt path, avoiding half-exposed rocks and sun-baked cow pies. They were both just the right size to make piggyback riding work.

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Muscular Tom understood Jake's needs back then in a simplistic way that Jake now admits had dwindled away over the years. The two lived separate lives during grade school when Jake went away to attend an orthopedic school in Madison where he could receive daily therapy for his cerebral palsy.

Yes, 40 years after piggybacking as kids, Jake realized they probably didn't really know each other that well -- not as high school kids, college students or mature adults. But still Tom instinctively knew when Jake needed a supporting hand to keep his balance or a relevant comment to help a stranger understand his garbled speech.

"I'm going to walk up the ravine a little ways," Jan, Jake's wife, announced, breaking his thoughts. Her voice sounded startlingly close as she suddenly appeared out of a thicket that ran full length down the hillside to a gurgling stream.

"Look what I found," Jan said slowly, almost to herself, as she came up the knoll. She was using a gnarled but sturdy piece of a small tree branch, long stripped of its leaves and twigs, as a walking stick. "Just the right size."

"I'll stay here," Jake answered in a stupor, hearing her but responding to her first comment. The early fall sun was warm but not too hot. The gentle breeze brought a fresh tinge to the pungent scent of mature foliage expecting the first frost, but the smell of cedar hung close to him and overpowered every other aroma.

Jake sat on the cedar bench and admired the handiwork of Pete, Tom's son, and Gavin, his son-in-law. His feet barely hit the cement beneath the bench. A little too high, maybe, he thought. And a little shallow in the seat.

A bit of sawdust, patches of bare earth and nuggets of excess cement made the bench stand out from the thicket behind it but not as much as the sloping rectangle of clipped grass that ran down to the stream and to a tree-line view of the sun in the West. The fallen tree to the north blocked the old cow path down the steep side hill leading to the site.

Spectacular view, Jake noted, but sequestered. It was the spot Tom had chosen. And his style.

The sun was making Jake drowsy, so he laid full length on the narrow bench, looking up at the leaves against the blue, hazy sky above him, knowing Tom was close by. Just two months before, his wife, Barb, had sprinkled his ashes in crisscross fashion up and down the hill-side clearing, as the family watched along the stream below.

Dead at 47. Jake repeated the words to himself, as if that would have made them more real. Tom had fought the brain tumor for 12 months, but, toward the end, he was frail and even started to walk like Jake -- in an unsteady gait and shuffle that betrayed his pretense of balance.

Tom turned out to be a quiet man, essentially known only by his immediate family and a few close friends. He and Jake could have talked about some of the things they began to have in common, once he had cancer. The step-by-step uncertainty of trying to walk into the next room. The attention he received every time he appeared in public. The necessity of letting people know he had a clear mind.

But then there was the need to get things done. The sadness. The anger. The fear. The resignation. Deciding to take your own life to save the family further pain and financial distress because health insurance was no longer covering the medical bills. Resignation. Death.

No. For Jake, that would have been too much to expect. Yes, they could have talked for hours. Maybe they should have. But, they didn't. The sibling rivalry, the tension between first and second son, the increased attention Jake received as a child from family and friends because of his disability -- each drove wedges between the two that they never tried to remove. Jan had recognized the problem years before. She was right, but Jake hadn't done anything about it.

And, Tom, in facing death, had gone far beyond where Jake was in his spiritual journey through life. Was it his place to intrude by trying to break down barriers that took years to build?

Jake accepted but didn't understand. He was disappointed yet filled with admiration for Tom. Jake felt guilty and complacent.

“You’ll drift apart, it’s true, but you’ll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.” - Philip Pullman

"Jake!" Jake!" he heard Jan urgently call -- this time more distant but still close enough to easily reach him as he rested.

Jake tried to sit up but instead rolled off the narrow bench with a thump on the loose earth below, turning his body downhill to break the impact of the fall. He jammed his ribs with his own elbow.

"What do you want?" Jake called out angrily -- deriding himself for missed opportunities, disturbed at his lack of discernment, upset by Jan's call, concerned about his ribs. He scrambled to pick himself up. In the process, he realized he wasn't hurt.

"There you are!" Jan, suddenly appearing from the thicket above him, said with pleasant surprise.

"Why did you call?" Jake growled in fractured vowels.

"I thought I was lost. What happened?"

"I thought you were in trouble, and then I fell off the bench," Jake said more calmly, needing sympathy.

"You all right?"

"Yeah." But she knew. There was no need to go into details on what they had covered, together, many times before.

"You know, a walking stick is a good idea -- especially in the woods like this," Jan was saying as Jake gathered his crutches. "I'm going to keep it."'

They ducked under the fallen tree and proceeded up the cow path -- Jake with his Canadian crutches, Jan with her walking stick.

"You feel bad?" Jan again asked, recognizing Jake's melancholy about Tom's death as they approached the steepest part of the hill back to their car.

"I'm OK."

The hill seemed steeper and more difficult going up than it had been coming down. Jake and Jan automatically switched to their mode for difficult terrain: He usually held her slender shoulder with his left hand for more substantial support while she used his left crutch. But this was a little different. She poked the walking stick, in her right hand, ahead of them and gradually pulled the two of them, in tandem, up the hill.

Add 33 years to Jake's timeline. He now realizes Tom had a sense of fulfillment because he lived a life he wanted to live. He had been authentic from his perspective, and he knew when to let go because he had grown, in just 47 years, to be whole.

“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” - Leonardo da Vinci

Tom had learned, in a short span of time, how to face death.

Jake's takeaway tip from his story: Prepare yourself to die fulfilled by living a life that reveals your true self.