WALK ON

Panus’ memoir charts his grief in the aftermath of his teenage son’s death in a tragic accident.

The author opens his memoir on August 9, 2020, in the moments before he—alongside his wife, Kellie, and younger son, Liam—learned that his 16-year-old son, Jake, was killed in a drunk driving accident. Jake’s girlfriend of six weeks was the driver. From that moment on, the Panus’ lives are forever changed, now forming “one blob of broken humanity.” Spurred by their grief, they established the Jake Panus Memorial Scholarship Fund (later renamed the Jake Panus Walk On Scholarship) in partnership with their church to grant annual post-secondary education financial assistance to the Lakota children of Red Shirt Table in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota—a place that was dear to Jake after visiting the area on a church mission the year before his death. They also memorialized Jake, an avid college football fan, in a University of South Carolina scholarship for football players. Interspersed with Panus’ own personal experience with grief are stories of others who have experienced significant hardship, from an elderly neighbor to recognizable celebrities like Emily Blunt and Oprah Winfrey. Photos of Jake at various points in his life—including a particularly heartbreaking one taken just one week before he died—bring a sense of personal connection to the memoir. It is Panus’ unique and sometimes poetic turns of phrase, however, that truly bring Jake’s story to life: “No matter where I go, so goes the invisible black cloud.” His hard-hitting truths are often a brutal reminder of humanity’s general inability to control the things that matter: “Protecting [our kids] is a mirage. We allow our children to go places without us by their side, like school, sleepaway camps, field trips, sporting events, and weekend getaways, without batting an eye, until that perception of control is shattered into a million pieces.” The author’s acknowledgment that grief is an “unwelcome topic in our society” makes his willingness to tackle it head-on even more admirable.

A raw, moving memoir that deftly explores grief and hope in equal measure.