Jacob's Award

by Richard Edfeldt

You’re probably aware that we have just concluded a move to North Carolina. Over the past year we have conducted the arduous task of downsizing. We have owned this cabin in North Carolina for about four and half years while maintaining our home in Marietta. We found it shortly after Jacob’s death while visiting with our dear friends, Wes and Debbie Stoops. Both Karen and I felt a strong sense of peace then and continue to feel that peace in the midst of our grief when we are in the mountains. Often times we have called this home, “Jacob’s Place: Our home of Refuge and Restoration”. But I digress…

While sifting through those mountains of boxes of family mementos, I came across a plaque awarded to Jacob at the end of his junior year in high school. It was during the first half of his junior year that his health deteriorated so rapidly to the point of him being placed on the heart transplant list and receiving that gift of life on December 21, 2004.

While he was in the hospital awaiting that life saving procedure, he tried to stay up with his studies. Through the generosity and support of the faculty of McEachern High School, Jacob would receive assignments and would endeavor to complete them from his hospital room.

Often was the time when Jacob was too sick and on so many different medications that he could not concentrate enough to work on his various independent homework assignments.  During those times when he was so addled, he received some ‘extra’ help from loving adults and students that had come by to check in on him.

Since I feel the statutes of limitations are over on any ‘stretching’ of the definition of support and/or help (some may call it ‘cheating’) in completing Jacob’s assignments, let me describe a few occasions that are fondly embedded in my memory.

Jacob was never a gifted student. His gift was being a friend to all he encountered, but he was not gifted academically. I remember one occasion when one of Jacob’s youth teachers from church, I’ll call him David, came to check in on Jacob when he was restricted to his hospital room. Jacob was struggling with a science assignment and that was David’s forte.  He offered some tutoring tips and, as Jacob’s endurance wore down, David gently moved Jacob aside and filled in the rest of the multiple choice assignment while Jacob drifted off to sleep.

That brings me to the aforementioned plaque that I found in a box of Jacob’s things. Jacob was taking a special elective class on Comparative Religions when his health took the ultimate nosedive. Again, his teacher was very gracious in him finishing the class through independent study.  The class was drawing to a close when Jacob’s health as at its weakest. He had the final test to complete but had no energy to draw on to do so.

You may be seeing where this is going …. but, in case you don’t, let me remind you my vocational calling – Christian ministry! Several of my classes dealt with Comparative Religions. Now it may cause you to think less of me in the less than honest action that I’m about to confess I carried out. But, as a loving father, watching my son wait and waste away waiting for a new heart, I felt compelled to help my son in this way. I took Jacob’s final exam in Comparative Religion.  I didn't give it a second thought nor did I sense any overwhelming conviction in standing in his stead except with a conviction of my love and empathy for my son.

At the end of the school year we attended Awards Night.  Jacob, with that twinkle in his eye and the wry smile he always had on his face, responded to his name being called …. and received the award for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Gifted Comparative Religion’ class.  That twinkle and that smile … and the standing ovation he received amid his name being yelled out by his fellow students was the best confirmation that I had done the right thing months before.

I do feel compelled to apologize for the other students in that class who may have received the award if I had not helped Jacob at that time. I hope you accept my motive. By now, chances are you are a parent as you read this.  You can now understand the lengths a parent may go to help their child who is facing more dire consequences in life than receiving an award and a grade in an elective class. And I dare say, though I hope you never face the situation, you would do the same for your child.