Jake

By James Sweeney

I will never forget my best friend Jake.A lot of people said Jake and I were a perfect match.  I always thought they were right.  The only difference we had was hair color.  Everything else was the same. I remember the first time I met him he invited me into the cool club.  From then on we were best friends.

I just never felt lonely around him.   I felt like he would do so much for me, and I would do so much for him. We were both good at

swimming and kind of didn’t like some of those land sports.  That worked out well for us.

Jake was just really special.  When I saw him I would just smile, and I do too with other friends, but with Jake it was different. 

I have so many happy memories.  The first time he came over to my house he said, you have so many LEGOs. He just loved LEGOs.  When I would go over to his house I thought he was so cool because he could build these huge LEGO things, and I would be like, oh I wish I could do something like that, but my creations would turn out really lame and wimpy because I was only in second grade. But Jake didn’t mind at all.

He could read so much better than I could.  I remember he was reading Harry Potter 3 when I could barely read the Magic Treehouse books.  I remember thinking, that kid is so smart.  But he never made me feel bad about it.  He always made me feel good.  He would never put you down, he would always put you up.

I am glad this summer was so great.  We had tons of sleepovers, so much fun at junior guards, and at water polo.  The last day I saw him we played great at the water polo game except the other team had too many good players so we lost badly.  We were awesome though.  On the car ride home, we kept on talking about stuff in the future, what we were going to do the next day at school, what we were going to do that weekend, and other bigger plans.  I wish I could just keep on reliving that day again and again.

The next day at chorus I was wondering where Jake was, because I knew we were going to sing together.  I was looking for him, and asking people, “Hey, have you seen Jake today.”  Then someone told me he was hit by a car and that it wasn’t that bad. Then, my dad came to pick me up from school and I knew it was really bad, I kind of just got really scared.

I was glad to be at the hospital because I was there for him.  I was making sure he was okay.  I remember one time he was at a sleepover, and I said, “Jake, I’ll be with you until you’re dying day.” And he said, “Yeah, I will be there for you too.” I felt like I kept my word and, I guess, I kind of did.

As I move forward, I’ll remember all the happy times and not the times when he was in the hospital, I’ll remember the times in the water polo game, the time when we squirted his chickens with our squirt guns, the time when we had a huge hose fight, and just so many, many great stories; Too many to tell here today.

There will always be an empty place in my heart where Jake was, I hope he's in heaven meeting famous people he always wanted to meet like Abe Lincoln, Julius Caesar, and George Washington.  He’s probably asking them questions about history and writing his own book.

I don’t know what heaven is like, but if Jake got to choose, he’s probably in a Roman city, living in a simple house, with his own library full of all the books he ever wanted. When I meet him next he’ll be like, “Shhh! There’s no talking in the library, James.  Dude, you cannot talk in the library.”