Husband Opens Up About Raising 6 Kids After Wife Died in Crash While Visiting Their Newborns
It’s been nearly four months since 41-year-old Jacob Evans lost his wife, Katie.
The mother of six was killed in a car crash on Oct. 6 as she headed home after visiting her then 2-month-old twin baby girls in the hospital. She was just a mile away from her Santa Clarita, California, home when a young driver slammed into her car, authorities have said.
Now, Jacob tells PEOPLE, the little girls are helping the family cope with the loss of the 37-year-old.
“[My sons] look at these little sisters as God’s gift to them to help make up for the loss of their mom,” Jacob says. “I’ve been getting back on my feet. I miss Katie. I don’t just miss her being here, but I miss the counsel she would give me. It’s hard when you have that best friend that you’ve been really close to for years and years, and suddenly they’re not there.”
Jacob previously told PEOPLE that Katie suffered three miscarriages before welcoming the little girls in late summer.
Previously a mom to four sons, he said Katie had long dreamed of having daughters — “She waited 15 years for these girls,” he said then. The little girls were born months early and were released from the hospital in December.
“It’s kind of overwhelming, but it’s fun too. [The babies] are really cute. As they get older, they get cuter and cuter,” Jacob gushes of his infant daughters. “They’re not very interactive, but they definitely let you know when you pick up one sister, the other one wants to be held too.”
He adds: “My niece Christina and I, we like to sing to them at night. We think the girls really like it, but even if they don’t, they don’t have a choice. They can’t crawl yet so they can’t get away.”
Jacob says that friends and family members have helped care for the children in the months since Katie’s death.
Although the family is slowly reaching a sense of normalcy, he says, it’s clear that the couple’s sons — Spencer, 13, Travis, 11, Nathaniel, 9, and 2-year-old Gideon — miss their mom.
“I have pictures of me and my wife that Travis will often sit in front of and just kind of look at his mom and miss her. He wants to make sure he remembers her,” Jacob says. “I think he’s afraid that he might forget. So one thing we’ve tried to do is to write down as many memories as we can of what we used to do together, of what we felt.”
He says the boys love having baby sisters, noting that little Gideon adores the girls and is often holding one of them.
His sons will regularly help feed the girls and prepare their bottles —”They love having the babies home, too.”
“We just try to focus on those good things, and I think that’s been really good for the boys and that’s been good for me, too,” Jacob says.
He says that while he is determined to think positive, it is still overwhelming caring for six children and coping with the death of his longtime love.
“The hardest part is that I have a lot of things I have to figure out,” he says. “Any difficult challenges I faced my life, I would discuss with her and we would figure it out together. So it feels a lot like trying to tie a knot one-handed: The other half of that problem-solving team not here.”
A YouCaring fundraiser has been started to help cover living expenses for the family.
