Read more at: http://ericslastwishes.blogspot.com
ERIC'S LAST WISHES
Early one summer morning in 2006, Eric Jacobs awoke with a start.
In bed beside him lay his wife, Heather, three months pregnant and barely starting to show. It wasn't yet 5 a.m., and Heather was fast asleep. So were their four boys, ages 1 through 6.
Eric was scared, confused. He'd just had a terrible dream: That he died too young. That he left behind a wife and five children, and so many unfinished things. And that he needed to do something about it before it was too late.
He got out of bed. He crept past the boys' bedrooms, down both sets of stairs of their split-level home in Ankeny, and into the basement toy room. He was surrounded by Legos, board games, cars, trucks, a plastic kitchen. His blond hair, or what was left of it after 31 years, was askew.
Then Eric Jacobs — a father who devoted every Sunday to family day, an evangelist who'd handed over his soul to Jesus Christ, a man whose life was filled with joy and promise — turned on the lights, sat on the floor next to the furnace closet, looked into a camera mounted on a Dell laptop, and clicked record.
If there is a God — and Eric Jacobs believed with his whole heart that there is — then God wanted Eric to find a spunky, brown-eyed brunette named Heather Shull.
Heather remembers when they first laid eyes on each other. Her stepdad worked at the utility company in Waterloo; his boss was Mark Jacobs. As her family drove to company picnics, Heather would ask: "Will the Jacobs family be there?" Even at 6, she had a crush on the eldest Jacobs boy.
They weren't in the same school district, so their paths didn't cross again until high school. When they did, it was love at second sight. Eric met Heather at a house party, drove her home, and there was no turning back.Within two months, Heather knew they'd get married. She loved his silly charisma, how he was always the ringleader in a group. She loved the stories his family would tell, like the time he gathered his younger siblings, brought all the family's mattresses to their driveway, and instructed everyone to jump from the garage roof onto the pile. Or when he turned a rainy day at his sister's graduation party into a group dance to "Singin' in the Rain," complete with umbrellas.
They went to Iowa State University, took the same classes, studied together. Then one evening after Heather's freshman year, Eric got them tickets for an ice-skating show at Hilton Coliseum. Afterward, heat lightning in the distance broke up the pitch-black night. He wanted to walk to the Campanile in the center of campus. Heather said no; a storm was coming. He insisted. They got to the bell tower, and Eric dropped to a knee. They married the next summer. Seven months after graduation, she was pregnant.
By fall 2006, everything had fallen into place: the life they'd always wanted. They had four boys — Brayden had just turned 7, Justin was 6, Keenan, 3, and Ethan, almost 2. Eric encouraged each of them to be as wild and carefree as a young boy should be. And Heather was pregnant again. They were hoping for a girl but would wait to find out, savoring one of life's biggest surprises.
His career was on the rise, too. Eric had a good job as information technology leader at Two Rivers Marketing in Des Moines. When the weather was nice, he sometimes biked the 13 miles to work. For extra cash, he kept up the Web development business he'd started in college.
And Eric had become a more vocal Christian, joining the building and education committees at church, studying up on the history of the Mormon religion to better argue with a Mormon friend. The family went to St. Paul Lutheran Church in Ankeny every Sunday morning, then spent the rest of Sunday as family day. Eric would organize silly things for the kids. One day he helped the kids set up a hot chocolate stand in their yard. Another day he decided they were going to build marshmallow shooters. They bought PVC pipe, shaped the piping into guns, spraypainted each a different color and went to the backyard for a marshmallow war.
Eric and Heather were busy, but they didn't neglect their own relationship. They talked for hours after putting the kids to bed. They kept Friday as date night, even if that just meant grilling steaks after the kids were asleep and having a late-night dinner by candlelight.
He had grown a goatee in the decade since their wedding and lost much of his hair. She had put on baby weight and chopped her long hair. It didn't matter. They would grow old together
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This is such a sad video...I feel so bad for the wife and the kids. I hope that they will still have a great life after witnessing this tragedy.
eternal5000 1 year ago