Eli
Appearances
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
He didn't respond for quite some time. I was in this seminar, a thing they called Family Constellations. I don't know if you're into this kind of stuff, but okay, so you go and there's this energy thing and you know, it's a room full of people and different people get up and they go through these energy processes and so forth. So they only do a couple each time and it was my first time ever and
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
Ich habe mich gehalten und sie haben mich angerufen und ich habe dieses ganze Familie-Konstellation-Ding gemacht mit mir und meinem Vater und seinem Vater und all diesen Energie-Ding und Max. Ich glaube nicht, dass Jake da war, ich wusste nur nicht, wer die Spieler waren.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
Und dann setzte ich mich auf und dann gingen wir auf Pause und ich schaute mein Telefon an und Jake hat angerufen.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
Wir haben dieses ganze Familienenergie-Ding gemacht, okay? Und ich habe mit Jake wiedergelebt. Ich meine, unglaublich. Du weißt, Leute finden tolle Veränderungen, die passieren, nachdem sie durch diesen Prozess gehen. Eli und Jake's two stepsisters, Sophie and Katie, drove to Western Massachusetts Hospital to visit Jake.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
7: The Resurrection of Jake
It's brutal, unpredictable and sometimes it hits him like a fork to the nuts.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
We were pretty active in our synagogue, and he had a bunch of friends that were from there, or their parents were there. We would let him have parties at the house, and he always had, like, a ton of people there. So it was clear that he had a good social life. And they were good kids. You could have an intelligent conversation with them, and they were just nice people.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
I didn't know at the time that he was supplying them all with, you know, pot and oxycodone or whatever, but okay, you know. They seemed to like him for himself.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
He was very dedicated to her. She became a freshman. She was kind of getting into the college life. And Jake was a chef and he wasn't kind of doing the college thing. So they kind of drifted apart. And I think he was kind of heartbroken. I think he was really attached. And it made me realize that Jake likes to have a steady. He likes that connection and that sort of permanence.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
I met Jake because I started dating his mom. I went to a party at their house and she catered it. The food was good and, you know, I thought she was pretty gorgeous. And so I asked her out. Well, it wasn't quite that easy. Somehow this mutual friend set me up with a different girlfriend of hers who was good friends with his mom. And I went out on a date with her, but I wasn't really into her.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
And so I told her that I was kind of into Marjorie. And so she was gracious and told Marjorie. And I guess Marjorie thought that it would be good to go out with me because she actually called me and said, so? Like, so when are you going to call? You know? And so then we started going out. And Jake was like four. And I had two kids who were six and four. And things moved along pretty quickly.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
And then we wound up moving in together and getting married and having another kid. She had a three-bedroom house. There were two big bedrooms upstairs and a little bedroom downstairs. She had one big bedroom. Jake had the other big bedroom. And then my two kids shared the little one. That's the way it goes, you know. And then we got married and bought a house and went from there.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
I mean, it was really cute. They actually got along great, really well. As a matter of fact, they got along so well that we hardly saw them because they were just having such a good time. We had another child. His name was Max. Max was a wonderful, smart kid, a little bit kind of off the wall and hard to handle, as it were.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
I think that also affected the family dynamics a bit because he wound up getting a lot of attention from me and Marjorie that took away from the other kids. Max was with us all the time. It was right around Y2K, 1999. Jake would have been going on 10, not quite 10. And then, you know, they found it, mammogram kind of thing.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
They found it in July. We were going down to the Jersey Shore where we went many years to visit with my family. We had just found out before we went down to the visit and it was the usual radiation and chemo. And then she had surgery like right on New Year's. She spent New Year's Eve Y2K in the hospital. That was huge because it really took her out of the picture in a lot of ways.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
She was a fighter. She lived another almost 10 years. She was undergoing treatment all the time. And there were periods when she was pretty much down and out and other periods when she was pretty good. But it made the family dynamic really difficult. Max was particularly difficult to manage. Our house was kind of crazy. And Marjorie had a brother who came to live with us for a while.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
He was also a little crazy. And so we just had pretty much a lot of things working against the family dynamic. Marjorie had cancer. Max had some special needs. We were a blended family. Her brother came and went and did crazy stuff.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
He was a sociopath, you know, the classic definition. And he came out of prison and he came to stay with us for quite a while. We were a very open family. We were very easygoing, you know, and he came and he helped out in a lot of ways. He was very capable. He could cook. He got a job as a chef. The chefing world is a world of drugs and alcohol. That was kind of a problem for him.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
The way he dealt with money was borderline criminal. You know, we were having a family Thanksgiving and he went, he bought this amazing food and gigantic ribeyes for everybody. And then dinner was over and he said to me, all right, yeah, I need a thousand dollars for the food. I'm like, what? We never talked about this.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
Long story short, he ran off with another brother's wife and he untrained our dog. He was a very charming fellow, but a little crazy.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
colon cancer, I guess. You know, they had told her it was irritable bowel syndrome, right? But then it was colon cancer. It was way advanced and she didn't last very long.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
Again, these splendid families are just remarkable. So Jacob's father had married another woman, and she had a daughter named Katie. And Katie was a couple years older than Jake. I just remember Jake coming home. I could smell alcohol in his breath. And he had been out with Katie, and Marjorie called the police. And we were telling the policeman, he's drunk.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
And so, you know, the policeman said, all right, Jake, breathe on me. And Jake would, like, inhale. And the cop says, I don't smell anything. We're like, he's inhaling alcohol. You know it. So I don't exactly remember what age he was. I mean, ninth grade or something. I had no idea the extent to which he was involved with stuff in high school.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
3: Wayward Son
Marjorie and I used to say, he's the one who's going to take care of us when we're old. He's the one who's going to get rich, you know, because he just was always outgoing. He just had a natural charisma and he was able to get things done. Unfortunately, he was getting drug deals done, but he was able to get things done.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
We want to stop by the hospital. We actually drove halfway to Worcester and then she called and said the doctor said you can't come. So we went home. So then on the fourth day out, she said you can come and we came. So, I mean, Ella was controlling everything. That's the story from there on out, you know.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
So we went and we came to his room and he was in the room and she was like a nurse, even though she wasn't a nurse, but she was taking care of everything, making the bed. She was like nonstop activity. And we're talking for like an hour. And then at some point she says, yeah, I was so stressed out. I went home last night and, you know, I shot up some heroin just to relax.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
And so I and I looked at each other and we're like, Why don't we, let's, you know, let us take you home. We didn't want her to drive alone. I said, you can't be doing this stuff. So she actually went in and got the needle and the whatever and brought it out. And I drove around Worcester looking for a dumpster and I threw it. I'm like, shit, now I'll get stopped by the cops.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
So I've got this heroin needle in my car, you know. And so, you know, we threw it away. And then we followed her to her parents' house. And we waited till her parents came home. I was honest, you know. And so she really should be here and not home alone doing all that.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
By this point, she had cut off everybody except me. Nobody could visit. Everybody on Jake's side of the family was cut off. And because she had health proxy, she could make all those decisions. I just refused to get into a fight with her. I knew there was, if I wanted to see Jake, I knew I had to stay on her good side. So I still had contact and I hadn't seen him for a while.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
Even though she was texting me, she wasn't really letting me visit. So I just want to be very clear. I mean, if she hadn't cared for him with the intensity and determination and focus for all that time, he would have died. I mean, I just absolutely believe that. Because it's almost like I want to believe that she was calling him out, you know? Jake, don't die. So she became obsessed with his care.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
I had regular phone calls with Varda and Ricky, like the three of us would get on the phone a couple of times a week.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
I would tell my wife, it's just me and the girls. We would just talk and just time talk through and what did you learn and what can you say and whatever and who should approach Elle about this or who should do that.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
5: Making Peace with Death
He attacked me and took a good chunk out of my leg. Luckily, she was right there and she pulled him off me. And I hobbled out of the house. I said, wow, if that had been anybody but, you know, basically your stepfather, you know, they'd just call the police and they'd take your dogs away or whatever. So she got mad at me and so then she cut me off.