A Connecticut father shares his story of coping with grief with the hope that it will help others...

SA: The pain of losing a child never leaves a parent 

SP: Jake was larger than life. He was magnetic, he was authentic, that's the best word I can use. Jake knew exactly who he was. He lived his life lifting people up, spreading joy

SA: Stephen Panus from South Port 

SP: In 2020, the summer of 2020, he was a passenger in a vehicle that was driven recklessly and went off the road and crashed and Jake died

SA: Jake Panus was 16. Stephen Panus used to leave daily affirmations on sticky notes for Jake and his younger brother Liam. In his time of darkness, Panus revisited those inspirational messages and turned them into a book, Walk On

SP: From integrity to authenticity to accountability to grace and grit to humbleness. Forgiveness, it ends with forgiveness. 

SA: Forgiveness was crucial 

SP: When I learned and came to a place where I could forgive everybody involved in this accident that was when I was able to kind of really step out and move forward in a much bigger way and to find new meaning in life. 

SA: New meaning, renewed purpose can be found in two scholarships in Jake's name for Native American children in South Dakota and a Walk On football program at the University of South Carolina 

SP: The ability to Walk On is the ability to accept that this happened and accept that now it's up to me to determine what I'm going to do with it 

SA: In South Port, Sean Adams WCBS 880 News