When I get back on land
Well I’ll never get my chance
Be ready to live and it’ll be ripped right out of my hands
Maybe someday we’ll take a little ride
We’ll go up, up, up and everything will be just fine
And we’ll go up, up, up
But I’ll fly a little higher
We’ll go up in the clouds because the view is a little nicer
Up here, my dear
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long now
If only I had a little bit more time
If only I had a little bit more time with you
We could go up, up, up
And take that little ride
We’ll sit there holding hands
And everything would be just right
And maybe someday I’ll see you again
We’ll float up in the clouds and we’ll never see the end
And we’ll go up, up, up
But I’ll fly a little higher
We’ll go up in the clouds because the view is a little nicer
Up here, my dear
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long now
As his raw but soft voice came through the tinny phone speaker, I bit down on my bottom lip and tried to clamp down on the tears that were forcing their way out. I was stunned at his ability to articulate such a deep and painful thing in a way that somehow lifted my spirit. Those beautiful words mixed with the melody, so heartbreaking yet joyful—so much like his life these past three years. A mix of deep sadness and awe mingled inside of me. This boy, my boy, who had been through more pain than he could ever deserve and who had to wrestle out his own private battles with God, had taken it all and turned it into something beautiful.
He had gone from seeing beauty in the midst of suffering to creating it. He had taken this thing that could have suffocated him with despair and stripped it down until all that was left was hope.
He had taken his eyes off that point on the horizon and lifted them to the heavens, to eternity, to the clouds.
Twenty
“WE NEED TO GET THIS RECORDED,” I SAID. I WANTED TO HOLD ON to this song forever.
Zach said he had a time set up with his guitar teacher who had recording equipment and that he and Sammy had some other songs they’d worked on together. This was news to me. I didn’t know they had been working on anything, but it made sense. If anyone knew Zach, it was Sammy, a redhead with beautiful green eyes whose quirky sense of style often included wearing old men’s sweaters coupled with a big bow in her hair. She was an Irish dancer and singer whose voice could just as easily fit into a church choir as a jazz lounge. Zach and Sammy had always been close friends and understood each other in a way only people who have grown up together do.
Seventeen years earlier, as desperate moms sometimes do, Sammy’s mom, Anne, and I had joined a church group for mothers with young children, and we got together regularly for playdates. Zach and Sammy met on a picnic blanket in our backyard at a playdate I hosted when they were a year old.
My friendship with Anne emerged after a playdate she hosted. I’d gotten a look at her hideously outdated cupboards and knew she couldn’t possibly like them. So hoping she had a sense of humor and wouldn’t be offended, I told her that I knew she secretly hated them and offered to help her paint them.
Thankfully, she laughed, agreed wholeheartedly with my assessment, and took me up on my offer. Our friendship solidified during a long day of painting. After we became dear friends, our husbands and children naturally followed suit.
For years thereafter, the Sobiechs and Browns, along with two other families, went on annual Labor Day camping trips. The “Last Hurrah,” so to speak, before the kids went begrudgingly back to school. When they were eight years old, Zach and Sammy stayed up late around the campfire and talked in hushed tones about the stars and what it might be like to hop from one to another. As they got older, the conversation turned to the bigger things in life like creation, their places in it, and heaven.
They were in the same class at St. Croix Catholic School, and for the second-grade Halloween party Sammy dressed as a beauty queen and Zach as a ninja. He decided that Sammy, being a beauty queen and all, should probably have a bodyguard. He knew just the guy and spent the day protecting her from evil and guarding her life, should it be threatened. That same protective instinct spilled over into their high school years. Zach was fiercely protective of Sammy, always suspicious of any guy who would try to persuade her with his affections. He didn’t trust them.
Sammy tolerated Zach’s overprotectiveness, along with his goofy and annoying sense of humor, not to mention his insatiable need to tease. Sometimes he drove her crazy! Like when he programmed her cell phone to autocorrect “choir practice” with “fartface poopy-pants.” (It’s still programmed that way—a problem, now that she’s joined the college choir.)
Before cancer, Zach was prone to being a bit showy of his athletic ability. He would never let anyone else win a race, and he felt the best way to display his incredible aim was to pelt a girl as hard as he could with a ball. Later, after cancer stripped him of strength and agility, he turned to self-deprecating humor and would show off his “wimpy” skinny leg. He became more introspective and quiet, moving away from the boyish reveling of how powerful his body was and reflecting on the bigger things in life, just as he did when he was with Sammy. He needed more and more to be with people who were calm and peaceful. He needed people who could sit in silent reflection while he strummed on his guitar. Sammy understood that part of him too. She became skilled at reading his face and knew that when the talk among his friends turned to more childish or gossipy things, a glance at Zach would solicit an irritated rolling of his eyes. She would steer the conversation in a more neutral direction. Their friendship was something precious and sacred.
Music became the thing that filled the empty space that words could not. They spent hours together, Zach strumming out a familiar tune and Sammy singing along. They decided, along with a few other friends, to take a stab at songwriting and planned a meeting to get started. Everyone assembled hoping to get something together for a Battle of the Bands event at the school, but the meeting didn’t go as planned. They all had different interests and ideas, and by the end of the night their enthusiasm for the songwriting endeavor had waned. The group moved on to other topics of conversation.
But Sammy still wanted to make a go of it. She grabbed a notebook and pen and quietly tucked herself away at the end of the couch next to Zach. She began scribbling down a couple of lines:
Dandelions have goin’ to seed, it’s my soul I need to feed
Trees stand so tall and bare and here I stand without a care . . .
She nudged Zach and turned the notebook for him to see. He read it and nodded his head. He liked where she was going with it. After the group disbanded, Sammy stayed. By the end of the night, she and Zach had written their first song together: “Blueberries.”
I knew they were working on songwriting together, and I was glad the two of them had a hobby to collaborate on. Sammy had a way of keeping Zach steady in turbulent times.
A week later, Sammy and Zach were hanging out downstairs in our family room working out an arrangement for the National Anthem they were asked to perform with a couple other friends at their high school’s homecoming game. After they worked on it, he told her he’d been writing something new, a song he’d had in his head for a while. He pulled a sheet of paper from a notebook.
“I wrote a song,” he said, handing it to her as he stood from the couch.
“Another one?” she asked.
“I’ve actually been working on it for a while, but things weren’t forming in my head the way I wanted them to. But after we got ‘Blueberries’ down, I knew I could finish this one too.”
With that, he walked out of the room and left Sammy alone on the couch to read the heartbreaking yet strangely joyful words on the page. No tune. No melody. Just
words. Zach’s soul laid out bare and raw. He was ready to deal with death. And Sammy knew he was okay.
If Zach was dealing with death, then she would have to as well. It had been there, lurking in the background, but they hadn’t ever really invited it into their conversations. It was a topic left for another day. Zach hobbled back down the stairs and opened the door. She looked up, an unruly strand of red hair escaping the confines of the big green scarf tied in a bow meant to keep it in line.
“Are you crying?” he asked, incredulous.
“No.” She wiped a tear away and laid the sheet of paper down. “This is good.”
Maybe they didn’t need to talk about it. Talking wouldn’t really fix anything.
Sammy pulled a notebook out of her backpack and a pen from behind her ear. “Let’s try this songwriting thing again.” Zach sat next to her as she wrote across the page:
Tell me something you’ve never told before
Before I walk through the door,
I adore you, I adore you
I do . . . I really do
Zach took the pen from her and added a line. It was the beginning of their song “Fix Me Up.” They would say the things that needed to be said in their own way.
WE HAD BEGUN MAKING PLANS FOR ZACH’S PARTY IN DECEMBER. Anne and I thought it would be great if we could have a CD of a few of their songs made by then. We could either give them away as party favors or sell them to raise money for pediatric cancer research. With three original songs ready to record, they went into the guitar teacher’s little studio. Every week for about a month they would get as much done as they could in a three-hour session.
A few days after their first recording session, Zach e-mailed me the recording of “Clouds.” I loved everything about it. I loved the soft, raspy sound of his voice and the way it cracked at certain spots in the song. I loved the nervous swallow at the beginning as he laid out his soul in such a vulnerable way. It reached the most tender part of my heart and grabbed on to the deepest sadness, but then rebounded and soared up to a place of hope. It did what a song should do. It spoke to the soul.
The tune was catchy too; it stuck in my head, and I’d find myself humming it throughout the day. I knew I was biased. I loved the song because it was Zach’s, and I knew it was born out of years of struggle and heartache.
Eventually I shared it with those closest to us, our family and close friends. I figured they would enjoy it because it would mean something to them as well. They’d been part of the struggle too. They all came back with the same response: they loved the song, and they were completely blown away that Zach wrote it. My favorite response was from my brother, Luke.
Luke was ten years old when Zach was born, more like a sibling than an uncle. Only now have my kids told me horror stories of the times Luke would babysit them. Like the time he chased them around the house with a stick he’d used to unclog the toilet, or when he let them watch Child’s Play, a movie about a demon-possessed doll who runs around and slaughters people. (All of them slept on our bedroom floor for days afterward, terrified to sleep in their own beds, but refused to tell Rob and me why.) They all look back now and laugh; it was fun having an uncle so close in age. Zach especially loved and admired him and was inspired by Luke’s musical talent as a drummer, guitar player, and lead singer. Luke was a seasoned musician and in a couple of local bands, one called Squares that had recently released their first record of haunting and beautiful songs that Zach and I both loved.
After Luke listened to “Clouds,” he sent me a text with a simple two-word expletive.
It was my favorite endorsement.
EVERY YEAR AROUND CHRISTMASTIME, KS95, A LOCAL RADIO STATION, hosts a radiothon to raise money for the Children’s Cancer Research Fund (CCRF) and Gillett Children’s Hospital. In July 2012, Mindy from CCRF called to see if we would be interested in participating in the fund-raising effort by coming to the radio station and recording an interview with the morning show team, Ryan and Shannon. Aware of Zach’s musical interest and talent, Mindy asked if Zach would be up for playing and singing a song.
My reaction was to tell them that Zach was a strong guitar player but he was a little shy about singing. I’d heard him when he was down in the family room as he played the guitar and experimented with singing. He had a nice voice, but it wasn’t strong. To me he sounded best when he was backing up Sammy; she was really the singer of the pair. In truth, I had no idea how comfortable he would be. All I knew was that I didn’t want him to stress about it, and I really didn’t want him to be embarrassed.
When I asked Zach, he jumped at the opportunity.
“Are you sure?” I asked, my tone imploring him to really think about it. “Have you ever sung alone in front of people before? I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I just don’t want you to do it if you think you’ll be too nervous.”
“I don’t know. I guess I figure, what have I got to lose? If I screw it up, it’s not like I’ll have to live with it for a long time. Besides, I’ll kick myself later if I don’t try this,” he responded.
He was right. Zach had the end in sight. If he couldn’t jump in and try something crazy now, then he never would. When it came down to it, I was afraid that he would fail and didn’t want him to be devastated by it. I was learning that my fears weren’t for Zach. They were my own, and failure only happened in the lack of trying.
So we headed into the interview with his guitar in tow. We didn’t know what to expect; this was the first time we talked publicly about cancer and dying. It was a hard interview for me. I broke down several times and cried. We were still getting used to the idea of losing Zach, and I was pretty raw. It’s hard when your child passes you by in life experience, and you realize you have no wisdom to draw from to help him on his way. I was candid about how difficult it was to see my son suffer because I wanted people to understand that suffering.
Zach kept his emotions in check. I was proud of his ability to articulate his view on things. When they asked him if he’d ever gotten angry because he had cancer, he said he’d never really thought of it that way. He said that his cancer was so rare that he “may as well be proud of it—one in a million.” He explained how he lived one day at a time and focused on what was immediately in front of him.
When we were done with the interview, we headed to the studio to record Zach playing and singing. He chose “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz because it was a song he knew he could play. They printed up the lyrics because he wasn’t sure he would remember them all. I was a nervous wreck as I stood in the hall and watched him through the window. I could tell he was nervous too, but he got through it and sounded pretty good. As we walked out of the station, Zach beamed.
“That was awesome.” He opened the back door of the car and shoved his crutches in. “I could do that every day!” It was his first taste of the rock star life, and he liked it.
In October I got a call from Mindy. The radio station was wondering if Zach had another song that might fit better with the interview. “I’m Yours” had turned out well, but the upbeat tone of the song didn’t mix well with the content of the interview. As a second option, I sent them “Clouds.” Within four hours it had been mixed with the interview and e-mailed back to me. The producers loved it.
Two days later, Friday evening, I got a call from Dan Seeman, the general manager of Hubbard Radio Broadcasting, the radio station where we’d done the interview. He’d heard “Clouds” earlier that day and would later describe in a letter to me the effect the song had on him.
“What I heard was a song that made me cry. A song that was personal and poignant. A song about faith, friendship, family, and hope. I heard a song that made me sad, yet inspired and hopeful. But most of all, what I heard that Friday morning was a really good song—personal and poignant, yes, but also catchy and popular, with a melody that stuck in my head. The lyrics contained a message that needed to be heard, a message that was wise and mature, yet delivered with innocence. But it was melody that d
rew me in. It was the melody that took an incredibly sad message and gave it hope.
“My eyes filled with tears, but my spirit was filled with hope. My mind filled with a clear understanding of the desire to embrace every single day. My heart was aching, yet longing for the opportunity to get to know Zach better. To help him tell his story.”
He offered to get Zach into a professional studio with professional musicians to record “Clouds.” We accepted, and by Monday evening Dan had a studio and a group of musicians lined up and ready to work on the project. The studio session was scheduled for Tuesday.
Dan asked if I would like the studio session videotaped; he knew a videographer who had some time that day and could spend it with us. I was thrilled at the prospect of capturing this unique experience on video. I wanted as many pictures, sound recordings, and videos as I could get.
When kids are little, it’s easy to video them. It’s a natural thing to do. But as they get older, unless they are doing something important like graduating, performing onstage, or playing in some sort of sporting event, there really aren’t opportunities to capture them on video without it being awkward. It’s especially awkward when your teenage child is dying. Every time I videotaped Zach in those final months, he was painfully aware of why I was doing it. He knew it was for our family to watch after he was gone. I could see on his face the moment when he would realize what I was doing. It was a heart-wrenching look of resignation.
The next day I drove Zach to his first big studio session. We entered the studio, and it was like Zach had stepped into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. He was in awe. The room was filled with instruments and high-end mixing equipment, and it was painted black with huge panels of purple acoustic foam throughout. He stood there leaning on his crutches and looked around, a huge grin on his face. Karl Demer, the studio owner, a big guy with a shy demeanor—the kind of guy you knew could give an awesome bear hug—introduced himself and welcomed us. Zach reached out and shook his hand and thanked him for such an incredible opportunity. One by one, the musicians arrived. Zach, the drummer; Matt, the electric guitarist; Sean, the bassist; and John, the pianist. Some of the guys had played together for a couple of theater productions, but none had worked together in a studio and especially not on something they hadn’t had time to prepare for. They’d been e-mailed the acoustic version of “Clouds” just a day or two earlier. Each had some ideas of what he could contribute to the song, but they all wanted to hear what Zach had in mind.
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