2005 Jakob Miller (1973-2005)

2005  Jakob Miller (1973-2005). Henry Adams, Elizabeth, Jakob, Michael Yoder, Ruth Miller in Pittsburgh, Julie at Cohen & Grigsby, Jakob’s women friends; Jakob’s depression, anxiety and passions, disappearance and death August 23, 2005, burial and memorial service September 2, 2005.  

When Henry Adams (1838-1918) wrote his memoir The Education of Henry Adams, of most of the 19^th century, he skipped from the years 1872 to the year 1892. During those years Adams was married to Marian (Clover) Hooper in 1872 until she ended her life in 1875. Adams never names Marian Hooper in his autobiography, with only a reference to the number of people who went to see her memorial. Over a century later in May of 2012 Gloria and I were among the visitors who went to see her Adams Memorial on a morning walk in Washington DC, a truly memorable experience with its haunting but tender sculpture. (We were in town for a few days of volunteer work at the International Guest House.) 

I am tempted to do as Adams did in ending my memoir with 2004, the last year before Jakob ended his earthly life in August of 2005. In fact, I have stopped writing for about six months, but I live in another century, and mine is a more personal story and not a national story.

In the summer of 2003, Jakob, his cousin Ruth and her boyfriend Michael Yoder of Hartville, Ohio moved from Kidron, Ohio, to Pittsburgh. Ruth lived with our daughter Elizabeth on the South Side, and Michael with Jakob moved to an apartment in Bloomfield. Elizabeth was teaching Spanish at Mt. Lebanon High School at this point, and Ruth and Michael soon got jobs with charter schools in Pittsburgh. Jakob went to work with a temp agency and soon was helping out with Julie Cocchiola of the large law firm Cohen & Grigsby in downtown Pittsburgh. Julie was Jakob’s vocational savior during the next two years.  

Julie hired Jakob as her associate in the office often in searching through office files and records in suits. When a case was going to trial with a deadline for evidence, Jakob would work all night on a project. I contacted Julie while writing this and she said: “To this day, several of the attorneys and I reminisce about one time when we desperately needed to get a filing to the court by a certain time and the car was in a huge traffic jam so Jakob got out and sprinted down Grant Street to the courthouse and got the filing there on time.  It was a scene right out of a movie and it makes us all smile.” Julie liked him and trusted him, and he returned favors, including going to Pirate games and collecting bobble head dolls of her favorite players during the 2003 and 2004 seasons.

Most winters we went skiing for a day or two, and I remember a beautiful February day when the sun was shining on the soft snow, and the open air seemed so refreshing and comfortable. I thought Jakob’s life could not have been much better with a good job, friends, and relatives like Michael, Ruth and Elizabeth nearby. But in the afternoon as I was becoming animated by the exercise, I saw that Jakob’s face was sad. I then realized how much Jakob was in a period of despair; he told me everything was going bad; he was simply depressed. He told me about his fears and anxieties.     

During these years, Jakob often met young women with whom he became friends. In Pittsburgh, he met a Serbian friend Sonia who did fencing as a sport. The women were attractive, intelligent, bright, and in transition, but eventually the weight of the relationship was more than they could bear. When we would discuss these things, I half-jokingly told Jakob that at some point he might consider falling in love with a cow. Here I was reverting back to my father’s rural imagery of young, trendy, and seductive women as heifers and nurturing, wise, and productive women as cows, dear reader, a term of affection.

My father of course had married the ultimate cow, our mother. In fact, Mattie had so internalized this identity that late in life she took the unusual step for an Amish Mennonite woman of taking an outside job as a school bus driver in order to provide family income and to make up for Andrew’s inability to pay for his new vehicles and Lookout camp improvements. Interestingly, for the rest of her life when Mattie proudly talked about this late-life job, she gave all the credit for it to Andrew’s immense tolerance on traditional gender roles. Some of us suspected a equal factor was her desire for financial independence.  

Jakob’s affinity for women friends seemed to be part and parcel the way he looked at the rest of life such as mental health and medication. During a crisis Jakob sometimes sought clinical help and took medication but never in a consistent way so as to level his emotions. He often told me that he preferred having the emotional highs, lows and passions, to a life of which he considered stable sameness. I think he and we knew he could hit a low point of depression which would make his very existence and life in danger.

In the summer of 2004 Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan were playing at minor league baseball parks and in August Jakob and I went to hear them one evening at the Altoona Curve’s ball park. It was a comfortable summer evening with both singing, Bob Dylan saying nothing and Willie Nelson cackling about his Homeland Security band. During the evening Jakob told me about the Russian young princes Olga he had met in a coffee shop. Within a few weeks they were married; Jakob left his employment with the law firm, and by September they were off to St. Petersburg, where Olga could get in touch with her Russian soul and Jakob might open a bookstore.

By December they were back in the States, and after a short time in Florida, It all ended badly with Jakob moving in with us in January. That winter our church was studying The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, and I remember we used to try to interest Jakob in the book and topic, because it was giving a lot of meaning, especially to Gloria’s life during this stressful time. The book was an interesting mix of Evangelical beliefs and practical folk wisdom but it never seemed to quite connect with Jakob. That Spring and Summer Jakob tried various jobs such as helping at Scottdale Wood Products, teaching in South Korea, and finally telemarketing near Irwin. He helped finish projects around our new house and often visited with his friend Tom Zeller in Scottdale. Zeller was an alternative healer who had found curative powers in sitting on Youghiogheny River rocks, smoking home-grown marijuana, and dipping in barrels of walnut juice.     

We last saw Jakob alive the evening of August 22 when we left to pick up Elizabeth at the Pittsburgh airport. That evening at the dinner table, Jacob had seemed sad and distraught, but we were not aware of any crisis from our conversation. We were talking about Elizabeth and her friend Eric’s month in Ecuador and looking forward to visiting with them. When I was backing the Jeep out of the garage, however, Jakob followed us to the car walked up to Gloria and said “I love you, mom” in a plaintive voice.

Later when we returned at midnight, Jakob and the Ford pickup truck were gone. For a week and a half we did not know where he was. We sent e-mail notes to his friends, wondering if they had seen him and filed a report with the Pennsylvania State Police of a missing person.  The state police were considerate but said unless an adult does some crime, they cannot search for a person. None of his friends had seen or heard of him since that evening, and we noted that his credit cards and E Z Pass (last exit at Monroeville) on the truck all stopped on that Monday when Jakob left.

On Friday the 2^nd of September we made a search for Jakob or the truck in or near the parking garages along the rivers in downtown Pittsburgh. We found no clues. Jakob had not let us know his whereabouts, even though we knew he was suffering from depression. Not calling or stayed in touch was totally out of Jakob’s character. When a Pennsylvania State Trooper came to our house on Saturday evening, I was relieved. He said that a body with Jakob’s billfold in the pocket was found at the bottom of the Bloomfield Bridge in Pittsburgh; a worker had found it from the smell.

He described a black Ford Ranger pickup truck which was found at a nearby supermarket parking lot by the bridge, the truck doors unlocked with the keys in the glove compartment. It was all so Jakob, and I regretted my angry feelings about Jakob leaving without letting us know. We told the police to lock the truck, and the early next morning Gloria and I retraced Jakob’s ride to the Bloomfield Bridge a week and a half earlier. We picked up the truck, and Rob Ferguson had his body returned to Scottdale with the death certificate noting the cause: suicide. 

We buried Jakob on Wednesday September 7, 2005, in the Alte Menist Cemetery; my mother sent down a wooden casket from Schrocks of Walnut Creek, and my brother Paul and Carol brought it down. These were the saddest days of my life; we loved Jakob so much but we could not help him in the end. If ever we had an honest son, or if ever there was a true Miller, it was Jakob. He loved the things we loved. He loved literature, music, ideas, Grandpa’s Johnny Cash, Christian hymns and blues. He also loved a lot of alternative music we could not reach. We had many conversations in which he was to me like a brother more than a son, whether the topic was current events, free-will, faith or freedom. Michael Yoder also used to call him the brother he never had.

But in translating ideas and topics to a practical reality or some level of personal contentment, Jakob often could not connect. It was like a handicap, a disease, and I realize that there were choices too. But Jakob tried, he tried again and finally the disparity of his ideas and reality was too great. I wrote in my journal several times paraphrasing the Hebrew King David on the loss of a son: 

O my son Jakob, my son, my son. Would that I had died instead of you. 

I told the family at the graveside that as a child Jakob often seemed emotionally without a coat on – and the weather was chilly. We prayed that the world would be kind to Jakob, knowing his emotional and psychological sensitivities. Now, I cannot appeal to anyone except to God, and so I will pray to God to be kind to Jakob. 

One could add much here of extended family, Scottdale community, Mennonite publishing, and church support during terrible times. Our pastors Conrad and Donna Mast led the memorial service and Jakob’s cousins sang “Comfort, Comfort Ye my People,” and Jakob's favorite hymn from Central Christian High School: “Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord,” and we all sang: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy." Sisters Elizabeth and Hannah, cousin Ruth Miller, aunt Miriam Kratzer, and friends Kim Miller, Tom Zeller, and Michael Yoder gave reflections.

Gloria, Elizabeth, and Hannah could write a whole book themselves, but life must go on for the living. A grandson would be born and there was publishing work to do, but that can wait until 2006. 

Most of this chapter comes from my 2004 and 2005 Thoughts on Life journal and personal files from that period. The Adams Memorial with the Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture is located in the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C. The quote by Julie Cocchiola regarding Jakob at the law firm came from an e-mail on February 10, 2014. The King David’s lament paraphrased is based on 2 Samuel 18:33.