Fare Thee Well

I met him fifteen years ago when he was sixty-two, and I was young and foolish but knowing him made me wiser as he knew and taught the value of time, living by the aphorism "we are burning daylight". I loved and will always love his daughter. His fifth born of six and I spent what to then was a quarter of our lives together. Jake seemed as broad as the Appalachian foothills where I knew him and he seemed as permanent. But that of course was an illusion because all on this realm is fleeting. Jake could speak definitively on more subjects than you could imagine, from the Bible, which he properly reverenced, to the nation he loved and in whose uniform he served, to affairs of state where he always knew more than he would ever let on, to matters on the farm, to home, car, and industrial repairs, to construction, to golf and football where he excelled, but most of all, Jake listened and he cared. He could seem laconic or by virtue of his size, even intimidating, but when you got to know him, which was my privilege, he was quite the opposite. To those who did not know Jake Rainey- you missed out. To those who knew him, Jake will be sorely missed.