Might As Well - JUMP! JUMP!!!

Ian,

I walk around our house, our yard or other places we frequented and it is amazing how often I remember you just jumping - into my arms, over couches, trashcans, to catch Frisbees, defend a soccer goal, to try to dunk a basketball. These events roll like mini-movies in my head as I look at our driveway, street, the living room.

I regaled to you as a kid the stories of my friend Greg Giddings - who at 6'1" could dunk like no other. His method of learning to jump was, as a kid, to touch the ceiling of his house with his fingers, then hand, then elbow before graduating to jumping over his car. These stories filled our conversations. Ultimately, you loved the idea of jumping. The freedom from gravity, the accomplishment of conquering an obstacle, the challenge to land on your feet.

Our ceilings did not allow finger tip touches - too high - but you used the basketball goal Granny and PaPa gave you to "stretch" your jump. We started at 8' goal when you were in 7th grade and gradually raised it to 10'. Dunk contests filled evenings and weekends with friends. The basket was usually set to 9' - and the latest dunks from NBA games, dunk contests on TV were converted into our driveway experiences. You invited me to join - and I learned quickly that coordination was required to dunk, not just vertical. I never could touch the rim of a 10' goal - only the last knot on the net. So, my "hops" were not great and my coordination was worse. Tomahawks, 180's, etc. were not possible for me - but were well within your reach.

I don't have pictures or videos of you dunking. This makes me very sad. The rumor from two different friends - one set in Austin and the other in College Station - is that you dunked the basketball on a 10' goal twice - once in each place. Oh how I would have loved to watch you accomplish a lifetime goal. From 7th grade you wanted to be a NBA player. Stopping growing at 5'7" really reduced that probability. So, dunking became that surrogate goal. I am thankful you reached it. I can only imagine the smile you had when you landed, the giggle, and the hugs that followed. That is a memory I wish that I could share.

Ultimate became another "jumping outlet." After three concussions in football, you needed a new sport. Your speed and jumping ability made your "go long" potential very high. I remember clearly seeing the disc just hang in the goal region and your hand rise up, seemingly in slow motion, just above the outstretched arm of the defender. The disc would be torn from the air into your clutches and a goal was scored! The converse happened as well - your hand rising to knock the opponents disc down out of play. The surprise on opponents faces - no short kid should be able to jump that high! The challenge to cover you - speed and jumping ability - was great.

I remember the most epic jump. In the middle of a tight Ultimate match, the disc was lofted above the defenders reach in the goal area. You laid out - backwards - to catch the disc with both hands on extended arms. Again, like slow motion we watched you fall and land on your rump, then your head snapped back to hit the ground with a thud. You held on to the disc, scored the goal, but sustained yet another concussion. Really? In Ultimate?

Soccer was another place we saw you jump - maybe that is why you wanted to play goalie?!?

You loved to punch the approaching ball out of the goal with outstretched arm, or catch it and disappoint an attacher. Goalies jump. Ian was a goalie. Ian jumped. I guess that is the way it was...

Outside our house, you would ask me to throw the disc for you to jump and grab it - running, standing still, laying out, etc. Yep, it was great fun to watch my beautiful, athletic son act as though he had glue to his fingers. No disc could not be tracked down or caught some days. The most challenging throws and catches were as you ran up the steep driveway and up the stairs to the front door. My job was to lob the disc so you had to leap and catch it either going up the stairs or arriving on the top stair. That rarely happened - my throws were just not that good. But the camaraderie, the smiles, the giggles and hugs when it worked were worth all the frustration.

Trash cans - when I first heard you jumped over our big orange trash can I was scared for you. Are you trying to break your neck? It was >4'6" tall and 3' long. Of course, for years you would come in the front door and leap over the brown couch. Or make your exit from the house epic by reversing the order. But the trashcan was very tall and the effect was pretty cool. Mom was very impressed - and loved watching you do either. We both prayed you would not catch a toe and fall over!

On our last weekend with you, Parent's Weekend 6 years ago, you told us on Saturday night that you were too tired to stay up and  wanted to go to bed. So, we dropped him off at the dorm and headed back to our B&B in College Station. Apparently you walked in and saw your friends in Moses Dorm and said to Brenden, “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” – together you said “Trashcans!” The Dorm crew stripped a room of mattresses (two friends who happened to be out that evening) and set up a long jump environment in the hall with trashcans to leap over. The video of you running, leaping four trashcans and landing in the fifth can, toppling link a bowling pin falling in the mattresses hair flopping, smile exploding on your face with a “WhooHoo!!!” The video is an amazing gift for us to have! You told Mom it gave new meaning to "taking out the trash."

I think that you loved jumping so much because of the rush of freedom, breaking gravity's hold - if even for an instant. Seeing your hair rise and fall as you lifted up and then come tumbling down with you - I will never forget it in front of our house, in our street, on Aggie field, around our trashcan or in our living room.

April 19th - is a hard day. You were ripped from our lives, not as one tears paper along a fold of a page, but as one tears many papers, each representing a future day of life, from a spiral notebook, leaving a mess of ragged, disoriented edges. You just cannot put that back together as it was. I have been tempted to jump on, off, or out of many things since you went Home. I guess that I have learned that the gravity-less-ness of the jump is always accompanied by the grip of reality and a driving me back to the reality of this world.

You jumping is a part of Danny's memory of you. He envisions you guys - still playing Ultimate with each other - and you laying out to catch the disc he has thrown. This is on his body - no doubt each day - he remembers, wishes to play again, and is thankful for the times he shared with his little brother. But as his tattoo shows - there is a barrier that separates us now. We feel this distance, the loss, the lack of sharing in real-time, the presence of only memory.

One day, it is our hope, that gravity will not grip your feet - my feet, our feet - any longer. That according the the Lord's own words,

...the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 1 Thess. 4

I cannot wait to "jump" with you at the end of days and be "caught up together" with you in the air. I will join you as gravity gives way to grace, time to eternity, pain to joy, and incomplete to completion, alone to with the King. Paul is right that we should "encourage one another with these words."

Till then I still remember you jumping.

I love you "e,"

Dad