Jake- how can you be gone? I am still hoping you will call me. I hear your laugh and your voice and hope this is a bad dream. I feel selfish for wanting you here... with me, mom, Gina, Josh and Michael. You were and will always be my little brother. Words can not express the pain I feel in looking at your photos and knowing the most handsome, giving young man I know has left. I will see you again Jake.

Say hi to dad for me. Love, Wendy

---

Most of you know Jake as a friend, a fellow rider or someone who helped you out in time of need. Others knew him as cousin, an uncle or even as a son... but to me he was just Jake, my brother.

The memories I have of him torturing me and me tormenting him go back over twenty five years. Our birthdays, being one day apart, were always celebrated together. When my husband and I adopted our son, only one name stood for the man I hope he would follow... Jake.

It is a blessing now, each day when I tell him to slow down on his bike or stop throwing rocks. In someways I think my Jake is being guided from his mentor above. When our dad died last year I began to have a bond with my brother I had only dreamed of. Gone was the anger I had, from him calling me "Mother Goose" or flushing my head in the toilet. Gone also was his fustration of me tattling or being bossy.

We were the last two Watson's! Jake didn't completly change though... his 2 a.m. faxs or calls from various hospitals weren't as cherished as they are now.

I will miss my new found friend in this physical life, but in my dreams, in my thoughts he is still here. My pain I hide by working to fullfill my dreams (Jake would want it no other way), but a part of me wants so much to experience them with him.