Mar. 28, 2008 - A wasted life
It has been a hard week.
On Tuesday, the man who had been Blake's gymnastics coach up until a year ago, committed suicide.
OK, well, actually he made it much more dramatic than that...he let the police do it for him.
What a legacy to leave behind for a bunch of kids to try and figure out.
Obviously it is a long story. Jay was hired by our gym back in '06, after Blake's previous coach left the gym to start his own gym. At first it seemed just great. He was a very high level coach, collegiate gymnast and all that. But anytime somebody with all that talent ends up in Wasilla Alaska, you know they are running from something.
We soon found out. On Friday, before their first meet, Jay ended up in jail with a DWI. His FIFTH DWI. Now we knew.
Things had already been going poorly with Blake and Jay before that. Blake was one of the higher level boys on the team, but we had reached the limits of our current coach long before, and there were some basic fundamental skills which had been taught incorrectly. We started seeing some favoritism. He liked the young athletes who he could form, not the older ones who were messed up. Also, Blake is a fairly well rounded individual. While he really likes gymnastics, he doesn't "live and die" for it. And that held him back. Just yesterday Delaney asked Blake "Why didn't Jay like you?" and Blake answered "Because he thought I was wasting all my 'supposed' talent, and Jay only liked you if you were a really good gymnast." That about summed it up.
Well, while Jay was in jail, the owner of our gym really reached out to him. I think he thought he could save him; talk him into seeing the light. He told him that if he could stay sober for a year, the gym would hire him back. There were a lot of parents in full support of this because of his coaching ability. I was not one of those parents. I was quite happy with Ryan, our young coach, because was willing to learn. He had learned from Jay, he learned from some of the other gym owners and so on... But when Jay came back, we accepted it. Blake really struggled. He would come home so frustrated and angry and he would take it out on anybody in his path, mostly Connor.
Leny and I pulled him out of the gym. We told him that he could go back, but he had to do it with a different attitude, because we would not have that spirit in our home. Frankly, we thought he was done.
One week later, he said he was ready to go back. And he did it right. His attitude was completely different. We talked a lot about not being able to change how others behave, only our own behavior. He seemed to embrace that for the most part.
So a year ago, we went off to Regionals in Boise Idaho. Luckily Both Jay and Ryan were along. We had 18 boys who had qualified. Jay was really stressed and revved up.
Friday morning, before the coaches meeting, he went and got drunk. Really drunk. Kicked out of the bar drunk. When Ryan found him wandering the streets, he told him that he would not be representing our gym. Jay went mental, threatening to kill Ryan, Ryan's wife, his new baby... He called the gym owners and threatened to kill them. Ryan called the police.
Jay locked himself in his hotel room and had a nice little stand off with the police. Finally he gave in, and spent the night in jail.
The next day at competition, the boys were a little shook up, but performed very well. Ryan was really shook up, but you couldn't tell it when he was with the boys, but after the sessions, he was really out of it. The boys actually did amazingly well, to the point that people were commenting. "Who are you guys?" First and second place in Levels 5, 6 & 8. We were all so embarrassed by the whole situation, that nobody said anything about our fiasco of a coach.
On Sunday morning I was having breakfast with Blake and 2 of the other boys. All the sudden I spotted Jay coming across the restaurant, towards us. He looked horrible. Normally a very good looking, well built man, the toils of two nights without sleep and a good dose of anger, were quite obvious. The boys (12 & 13 year olds) stared at him with their mouths hanging open in horror. (I almost laughed). He had 2 favors: He wanted to borrow my phone charger, and he needed someone to get his luggage from the police station, when they opened on Monday, because he was flying back. I agreed that we could do that. He wondered if he should go watch the boys that were competing that day, and thinking of the gun show going on next door, I said that it might be unsettling to the boys. He grudgingly agreed. I offered to buy him breakfast, but he declined.
Obviously, that was the end of his employment.
But Blake's other previous coach, who had opened his own gym, thought that he could handle the situation, and hired Jay. Most of the families at that gym knew nothing about what had happened at our gym. But USAG regulations are changing, and starting next year he would no longer be able to coach at meets because of his jail record. Maybe that was part of his despair.
On Tuesday he called our gym owner, very, very drunk. He thanked him and apologized for what he had done a year ago. Then he said"I just want to say goodbye." Lynn asked "What does that mean?" But Jay hung up. Lynn called the people that he lived with, and they went home. At some point, Jay must have talked to his Dad, who called the police. When the police arrived, Jay started shooting at him, and they were forced to return fire, and he is dead.
The first day it was just shocking. In a way it wasn't surprising, just shocking. As it always is with suicide, everyone questions what they could have done differently. I wondered if I should have done more. So many people had done so much for him, given him so many chances... but when it came down to it, he just couldn't handle life.
Yesterday I was in the grocery store thinking this was just something that had happened and didn't touch me when all of the sudden it just hit me that I was just so depressed and weary, that I wanted to go home and curl up in bed. I went to they gym to pick up Blake, and there was Lynn, the gym owner, sound asleep in his office with his 2 week old grandson on his chest. I guess I wasn't the only one feeling that way.
Blake is handling it like a male. Tough guy. I'm not really sure how to talk him through it. The imagery really gets to me. I picture it happening. When we had picked up Jay's luggage at the jail last year, I went through it very thoroughly before checking it on the plane, because I didn't want to be responsible for anything illegal. It was very personal in a way, and the contents, even the smokey smell, of his suitcase keep flashing back to me, tied together with his horrible, violent end. I have no idea how all the kids he coached are supposed to process this.
Obviously, we will move on just fine. We had very little in common with Jay, and yet he was very much a part of our lives, bringing us into an ugly experience that is just the kind of thing that we read about in the papers, not that happen to us.
Sigh.
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2008/03/26/breaking_news/doc47e9d7e344853214031962.txt
Comments
Mar. 28, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Jenni in KS
How sad. I'm sorry those kids have that emotional baggage and confusion to deal with. I think this is an important lesson for your kids, though. This is why being well-rounded (and grounded in faith) and not hanging your entire life on just one thing is so important. Maybe that wasn't Jay's only problem, but from your post it sounds as though it certainly played a part.
