Every morning, after I descend a flight of stairs to my office and take a seat at my desk, I see a clay paw print. It’s balanced against a clock radio and belongs to my late cat Doug, who died too young at the age of six on the day after my alma mater, the University of Washington, lost in the College Football Playoff National Championship to Michigan.

Doug’s death felt like adding insult to injury in the moment, but his legacy has lingered. I have been in the presence of many felines in my 49 years, and only one, Sylvester, possessed Doug’s sweetness and innocence. Both Sylvester and Doug were tuxedo cats, but Sylvester’s life lasted twice as long.

Nothing is more traumatizing than a life that ends too soon.

Stephen Panus knows this all too well. His son, Jake, died at the age of 16 in a car accident in 2020. Stephen and Jake (pictured above) were doppelgängers. The elder Panus is a popular horse racing executive, and his son lit up every space he entered — until, tragically, he couldn’t anymore.

Comparing the death of a young cat to that of a teenage boy is not a fair equation. But it speaks to the strength of Panus’ new book, Walk On, which touches on every corner of grief.

Part memoir, part self-help tome, Walk On plants the reader firmly in Panus’ shoes, and in the immediate aftermath of his son’s death, he wasn’t doing much walking around.

Here comes the son

Panus is unrelenting in his introspection, making it very clear that Jake’s death was a gut punch to end all gut punches. He details his emotional recovery methodically, and he largely — and admirably — leaves anger out of the picture. 

As a parent, you are duty bound to allow your children a certain degree of independence. And if and when that independence yields unpleasant results, it’s only natural to point a finger at yourself. Now imagine if that unpleasant result is the worst conceivable one — gnarly, heartbreaking, and irrevocable.

Jake died during the dog days of the COVID-19 pandemic, which only amplified Panus’ grief. A strength of Walk On is the author’s ability to take the reader all the way down to where he was — and then slowly provide an account of his reconstruction.

Panus has chosen to honor his late son through a series of scholarships. Walk On could have been about that, but while it touches on those endeavors, it shrewdly maintains focus on Panus’ inner machinations.

He and his family have experienced the ultimate loss, and the book’s power lies in its illustration of that raw emotional wreckage and what it takes to turn it into some semblance of positivity.

There is no getting over the death of a child, as Panus lays bare in his book. But, in a way, Jake’s not dead. He lives on through the kids who attend school for free through the scholarships that bear his name and, in a handful of lovely passages, he exists in the metaphysical sense. 

When Panus sees a certain ray of sun, well, that could be his son. He’s up there, somewhere, larger than life and impactful as ever.

Photo courtesy of the Panus family.