Though it's mid 2023, I still remember January of 2021 quite vividly. I remember working from home, as I had for many years at that point. This time it was a little different, in that my husband was my "office mate" with the on-going pandemic of COVID-19. We were chatting in the kitchen, when we heard some sirens (fire truck or ambulance), then we heard more. Then we heard a lot of them extremely close. I don't know if it registered that it could have been for any of my family members yet or not. I live right next to my ancestral family farm, and within a half mile of 4 other family & close friend's homes. I got a call from my mother saying "I'm at the farm, come now". Now, knowing that I'm a farm girl, and my parents are the farmers, that may not seem odd that my mom was "at the farm". "The farm" as we call it is the original homestead that I remember my grandparents living on. My parents live in a separate house and smaller lot right next door. Once they inherited the farm from my grandparents they choose to stay in the house they had been in their whole marriage. So needless to say, my mother doesn't venture down to the farm buildings and barn very often. The fact that she was there, told me something was extremely wrong. My husband and I went over immediately. I could see the emergency lights as soon as I turned onto their road. My mom was at the end of the farm drive by the road, crying hysterically. I asked "WHO IS IT" & "How bad is it?" As she got out my cousin's name, "it's Jake!" she collapsed into my arms.
While there, we were able to get some additional information, basically he was in an accident, and was no longer with us. Thankfully, if you can ever say that to someone dying, was that he didn't suffer and died quickly. Another piece of comfort you can say is that no one else was with him, to have tried to save him and have their own injuries. The professionals reassured us even if a 2nd person was with him, as there should have been for safety purposes, it wouldn't have saved Jake.
There are many more memories I have of that day. Most of which haunted me for months and still do periodically... but I want to spend the rest of this time remembering the wonderful man that we lost far too early.
Jake was my only male cousin, and was closest to me in age within our whole family. He would include me in the play time at family events and whenever we were at each other's houses. Even as an adult, he was by far one of my favorite people. He was always kind, frank with you, and always willing to lend a helping hand. He had more faith in me at times than I ever had in myself.
A few silly memories:
We were canning something at grandma Baumberger's house, just like every summer that I could remember. We must have been working on Jake's batches to be canned, when it came time for him to leave to donate blood. He must have gone to call and rescheduled his appointment so he didn't leave his work for the rest of the family. When grandma learned that he had an appointment to donate blood she nearly shooed him out the door! Us grandkids didn't realize at that point how important donating blood was to our grandma. Sometimes after that, Jake would tease that he had another blood donation appointment he had to run off to, to get out of whatever task grandma assigned he didn't quite want to do. Though, he never actually lied, just liked to tease grandma and give her a little grief.
My brother and Jake were the only boys in our generation. They were also the dessert fiends! There would be many times we couldn't find a specific pie or a container of cookies at a family holiday dinner... only to find that the boys snuck them away to save for themselves. They could also be found in the attic stairwell sneaking cookies around the Christmas season.
A more recent memory is all of the times he helped Ben and I understand and learn how to renovate our home. We bought our first home in June 2016, to be nearer my family's ancestral farm. This house was sorely neglected for many years as the owners were very elderly. Our last large renovation project was gutting and remodeling our bathrooms. Jake worked along side our grandpa since a young age learning carpentry. If Jake couldn't build it, we called grandpa. Needless to say, we had many last minute calls and texts to Jake about various house projects. With him living just across the field, he would just hop on the 4-wheeler or side-by-side and stop by to help for the 5 minutes, and stay to chat for 30, lol.
I'm sure I will continue to add to this tribute to Jake, but I really wanted to share some of this wonderful man's story.
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