Jacob & Autry
Thoughts on Jacob
Years ago, Jacob and I happened to be visiting India at the same time on our own respective trips. Jacob was not only a good friend, but someone I had travelled extensively with in the past. Years earlier we had attempted an ill-fated trip to Iceland (full of type 1 & 2 fun), and had guided numerous backpacking and rafting trips in Colorado over the course of several summers. When I learned that Jacob was going to be in Northern India at the same time as me, I became really excited - India can be a difficult place to travel, and even when the destination is somewhere less chaotic and more predictable, good traveling companions are hard to come by. Jacob was one of the few people that I would have had no reservations about meeting up with. I looked forward to sharing such a unique experience with one of my really good friends.
We met in Varanasi, which is both one of the oldest cities in the world and considered to be one of the most sacred places in India. For Hindus, a large part of Varanasi’s spiritual significance is rooted in the Ganges river, which flows through the city and is believed to be a goddess. Everyday, hundreds of bodies are ceremonially burned on its banks, and the ashes are then spread into the river, as it is believed by many that the Ganges is capable of washing away sins. For many Hindus, being cremated in Varanasi holds the ultimate salvific power - the liberation of the soul from the cycle of reincarnation.
Although it had been years since I had seen Jacob with the previous regularity of our guiding days, we instantly stepped back into the rhythm of our friendship like no time had passed at all. We spent the days navigating countless claustrophobic back alleyways, dodging aggressive monkeys and street dogs, taking pictures along the banks of the river, talking to the locals, and laughing and catching up about everything that had happened since we saw each other last. At night we would spend hours posted up with a few bottles of Kingfisher in various rooftop restaurants overlooking the city - the conversation oscillating between joking in the way that is only possible between old friends, and sharing our deepest convictions. I vividly remember him talking passionately about his work with World Relief and his convictions around supporting immigrant families and marginalized religious communities. Those couple of days in India were characteristic of time spent with Jacob: equal parts fun and inspiring.
Since Jacob’s death, one particular memory from our time in Varanasi has taken on a new significance for me. One morning, Jacob and I walked down to Manikarnika Ghat - the most well-known cremation site for Hindus who have come to die in Varanasi. Unsure of what to expect, we found our place alongside the others who had come to observe, about fifteen feet away from one of the funeral pyres. We nervously and curiously waited there to see something that is mostly taboo in the western world, the process of death. We quietly watched for a surreal and indeterminable amount of time as a family brought down the body of their loved one, wrapped them in ceremonial dress and flowers, laid them on top of the pyre, and brought down the sacred flame which has been kept alive for hundreds of years. The family wept together and sang prayers as they said goodbye, ritually releasing the body as the rest of us stood by in reverent silence.
It was an experience so loaded with meaning and emotion, so powerful, that as we watched I struggled to process what I was seeing. Being played out before us were two of the most fundamental experiences of humanity - of dying, and of losing someone you love. I had been to funerals before this, but none of those had prepared me for such a naked and unfiltered portrait of death, of grief, and of letting go. Intellectually I could grasp what I was seeing, but what I could not grasp was what it all meant. For all of the laughter and adventures and deep conversations that made up Jacob and I’s friendship, it is interesting to me that the memory of him I’ve returned to so persistently over the last several weeks is one that we shared in silence. Perhaps that’s because, without realizing it at the time, Jacob is the friend with whom I have come closest to death. Maybe it’s because now that he is gone, I am beginning to understand what I couldn’t then. That death and loss cannot be made sense of, at least not completely. Ultimately, they can only be felt.
Throughout our friendship, Jacob and I experienced so many things together - swimming through whitewater, getting lost in the mountains and having to navigate high alpine medical evacuations, spending the coldest (and wettest) three weeks of my life under the northern lights, and staying up countless late nights talking about God, what it means to live a good life, and how to be a more compassionate person. There is a vitality and urgency to a lot of those memories, as well as a lot of lightness. Jacob was the type of person that could hold anything in the sense that he was both dependable and deep. You could count on him when shit hit the fan, but he never took himself so seriously that he lost his sense of humor (and he was fucking hilarious). He was be able to weave between layers of relationship seamlessly. One minute he would have you cracking up and then often, without effort, he would have drawn you into a conversation of much deeper importance. His priorities were always deeply human.
Learning to raft with other people is an experience that demands (as well as produces) a lot of intimacy, but there are few experiences I’ve had with another person that were more intimate than standing next to Jacob at Manikarnika Ghat, watching one of the deepest truths of life unfold in front of us. So many times throughout those years at Noah’s, Jacob and I stood next to each other on the edge of the Arkansas river, each of us on our own respective paths and on the brink of our own respective transformations. I now know just how much the Arkansas river changed me, and I know that Jacob played a significant part in that change. Looking back though, remembering him and what his friendship meant to me, my mind has returned to another river we once stood in front of; the river which symbolizes the ultimate and final transformative mystery. People travel from all over India to cremate their loved ones on the banks of the Ganges as a way of letting go. Grieving Jacob’s loss, my mind has returned there not so much in the attempt to let him go, but in the effort to come to terms with what it means that he’s gone.
That grief has been heartbreaking, but, strangely, it has also been full of gratitude. The last thing I want to do is twist tragedy into something more palatable, because I don’t think this sort of loss can be made sense of. Neither do I want to push away the pain of loss, because I think that would be a grave disservice. At the same time though, as other people have noted, part of what makes Jacob’s loss so painful is also what I am most thankful for.
In the time that I knew Jacob, he was consistently and unwaveringly committed to his values. He was one of the rare people who put his money where his mouth was. Speaking as someone who has been bitterly disillusioned by hypocrisy, it’s hard for me to overstate how much I looked up to Jacob because of his congruence - how much his example has informed and shaped my own convictions. He wasn’t someone who just spoke about hypothetical ideals and morals - he built his life out of them from the ground up. It’s odd how rare that is… that so often we confuse speaking about compassion or inclusivity with actually being compassionate or inclusive. Jacob was one of the few people I have known who actually practiced what he preached, and he did so in a way that never felt like preaching - it was just who he was and what he felt was right. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a genuinely good person in a way that is not commonplace.
Not only has his friendship made me a better version of myself, he’s inspired me to be a truer version of myself too. When Jacob told me he was gay, my immediate impression was that it looked like a physical weight had been lifted off of him. He seemed lighter, less constrained. The Jacob I had known up until that point had never seemed inauthentic to me, in fact that was probably the last word I ever would have used to describe him. But even in that short conversation, it seemed that he had finally stepped into himself in a way that I hadn’t even realized was possible. I was so happy for him, so proud of my friend. In the years since then, every time I’ve seen him I’ve been so grateful for the continuation of that freedom he found. The last time I saw him a few weeks before his death, he was covered in flour and smiling ear to ear. He was completely in his element, doing something he loved (and was great at), with the person he loved most. I remember thinking that he had found a level of authenticity that is so elusive for most people. So many of us never seem to get there.
Jacob not only became his truest self, but he also found an amazing and loving partner in Daniel. He built a business that allowed him to meaningfully and creatively express himself, and he fostered a community built on dignity, inclusivity, and authenticity. He lived by his values. He was a kind and caring friend. And while all of that is a source of celebration, it also makes the pain of losing him cut that much deeper. But if it is true that someday we all have to die, then the freedom and love that Jacob found in his final years is all I could hope for any of my friends. So many people live much longer than Jacob and never achieve that. Tragically cut short, his was certainly a life well lived.
It is not only Jacob that is gone, but with him a piece of all of us. Leonard Cohen once wrote that, “even damnation is poisoned with rainbows”. That is how it feels to me now. That paradoxically, in the middle of all the anger and confusion, in the middle of what is irredeemably senseless and dark, there is also gratitude for who Jacob was and the memories I have of him. There is gratitude for how difficult it is to say goodbye, as that difficulty is a testament to the magnitude of what has been lost. And finally, there is gratitude for the final lesson that Jacob has taught me - that, for myself, the pain of saying goodbye does not have to be something either let go of or held on to. It is simply something to be felt: the feeling of missing my friend - standing on the banks of this river of loss with all the rest of you who loved him.
I wish Jacob peace. I wish all of us much goodness.
In Grief and Love,
Autry
