Thirty-Two
WHILE THE CANCER SLOWED ZACH’S BODY DOWN, THE INTERNET attention picked up speed. By the end of February 2013, the story about how he wrote “Clouds” had been running on various Internet and television news programs for months. With each bit of coverage, downloads surged and then dwindled. “Clouds” had been averaging around sixty downloads a day, then jumped to around a thousand. And then CNN Student News ran the story and was viewed by thousands of middle school children across the country, which resulted in tens of thousands of downloads.
For many, the response was deeply emotional. They imagined themselves in Zach’s shoes and what it must be like to know you are dying at such a young age. He was a kid close in age to them with many of the same dreams and struggles, but he was going to die and lose it all. Through the eyes of Zach’s story, they were able to see things more clearly and gain perspective on their own lives. What seemed like a problem before hearing Zach’s story wasn’t such a big deal anymore. Their perspectives on life changed, and many of them were profoundly affected. It seemed as though the message they heard on the news that day was delivered just for them.
Every hour, hundreds of people visited the “Clouds” video on YouTube and posted comments:
“Zach, you are my hero.”
“You showed me how to live a better life and I’m going to do it.”
“You are amazing and we love you.”
“I’ve never cried for a video before but this one made me bawl like a baby.”
“You showed me what is really important in life and I will never forget that.”
“Thank you.”
Thousands of comments like these were written over the next several weeks. A movement had started, and it just kept growing. One mom wrote to me about how her ten-year-old son came home from school and told her a story he’d seen on the news. It was about a teenager who got cancer and now was writing songs to say good-bye to his loved ones, and he wanted to download one of the songs he wrote called “Clouds.” She said she listened to him go on and on about this teenager and his song all evening. She thought he would eventually lose interest in downloading the song, but he didn’t and he was relentless in his begging. Finally, she gave in.
“I am so glad I did,” she wrote in her comment on the “Clouds” video. “The song and Zach’s story have not only inspired my son to be thankful for what he has, but it has inspired me to be grateful for every day that I have with him.”
“Clouds” was reaching the hearts of children and adults all over the world. Hundreds of YouTube tribute covers of the song were being posted every week—countless teens from across the country, professional musicians in their twenties and thirties, and even toddlers were all singing “Clouds.”
Of course there were “trolls” too. Trolls are lazy people who want attention, so they cowardly choose the easiest route and post nasty anonymous comments online in order to provoke anger and disgust from those who read them. It seems the troll’s chief target is anything that promotes positive thought and change. And so it was with “Clouds.”
Initially I was disturbed by the comments. Zach had enough to deal with. He didn’t need to see comments like: “He’s just another kid with cancer and not a big deal” or “His song is only popular because he’s going to die.”
How could people be so cruel? I wanted to fight back and make my own snide comments to cut them down and shame them. But that was exactly what the trolls wanted, to provoke people into an angry reaction and pull them into a public argument. One comment in particular got under my skin. It said something like: “Ha ha, he’s dying! Why waste time caring about someone like him. He’s already dead.” After the initial surge of disgust and anger, I began to realize how sad some people are. If hearing a song like “Clouds” and knowing Zach’s story provoked hate, jealousy, or bitterness in a person’s heart, then how messed up must that person’s life be? Despair is an ugly thing, and it does ugly things to a person’s soul. So rather than sling anger back at them and feed their despair, I began to offer up little prayers for them instead: Lord, You know what’s going on in this person’s life. Please give him the grace he needs at this moment to heal. It seemed like a more productive way to deal with them and brought me peace.
All the attention that Zach received on the Internet didn’t alter his life much. By now there had been almost three million hits on the “Clouds” video, and hundreds of covers of the song had been posted as well. But Zach could easily block all that out of his life when it got to be too much by simply shutting down the computer or phone. He would occasionally, though, check the comments on the various videos, and of course, he enjoyed the uplifting ones. He was pleased to see how many people the song had touched. But the cruel comments were difficult to take. Not so much those that were critical of the song itself; most of the musicians who commented complimented him on the composition and lyrics—they knew it was a good song even if they didn’t particularly care for the song itself. It was the fascination people had with his dying that got under his skin. It really irritated him when people would ask if he had died yet, or worse, assumed he already had. He felt like people were eager for it to happen, almost like they wanted it to happen.
But he didn’t let it get him down for long and eventually quit looking at the comments altogether. His time with family, friends, and especially Amy was much more important to him. Whatever was going on in cyberspace didn’t have much to do with what was going on in real life.
Thirty-Three
BY MID-MARCH, THE TUMORS IN ZACH’S LUNGS WERE HUGE. THE biggest one was seven and a half centimeters in diameter and was between his lung and rib cage, just under his left arm. He could feel it rubbing on his rib cage when he breathed, and it hurt. Radiation was the best option to shrink it, as well as to provide some pain relief, so we made daily trips to the hospital for three weeks straight. Radiation made Zach tired, but it also shrank the tumor enough to stop it from rubbing every time he took a breath.
His daily appointments were scheduled for eleven o’clock in the morning so he could sleep in. I usually drove him in, but occasionally Zach would drive himself. I got the impression he preferred for me to take him so he didn’t have to be in the waiting room by himself. The children’s hospital didn’t have the proper equipment to treat his lung tumors, so he had to switch to the adult hospital, which meant sitting in a waiting room full of adults.
“It’s like sitting in a funeral home,” he would say. “They all look so mopey and worn-out, like they have no life left in them.” And he had a hard time listening to the complaints of people who were so much older than himself and who’d had the privilege of a long life. One morning there was a particularly obnoxious woman who felt it necessary to air her every complaint to the waiting room full of people. I caught Zach’s eye when he looked up from a worn-out copy of ESPN Magazine. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and smiled.
“Do you think she’s ever thought that maybe some of those doctors are the reason she’s still alive and able to complain?” he joked as we walked toward the exit.
“Maybe we should write complaint letters to those doctors for keeping her around,” I replied. It was crass and insensitive, but sometimes it helped to joke about stuff. And it certainly helped to have someone to joke about it with.
Most days, when Zach got home from radiation, he would grab a small snack and whatever drink he was into that day, head for his favorite couch downstairs in the family room, and sleep for a couple of hours before Amy came over after school. It was strange for her, not having Zach at school anymore, and she missed him. She would stay with him for a few hours, then go to dance and come back, sitting with him until late at night, often not getting home until midnight or one o’clock. Then she would do it all again the next day.
Zach managed to muster up the energy for some important things. He did his best to make it to Grace’s basketball games. He loved watching her run down the court like he had done a few years earlier. Grac
e liked having her big brother in the stands, but made it clear she didn’t want him judging her or harassing her about how she could have done things better. Zach complied.
One of the major radio stations in the Twin Cities, Cities 97, extended an offer through Scott Herold for A Firm Handshake to play at one of their Studio C sessions. It was a small studio where the latest, most popular bands would play for a private audience, then donate the recording of the session for charitable purposes. It was an exciting opportunity for A Firm Handshake, and they jumped at the opportunity.
A few days after their studio performance, Zach and I were headed back to radiation.
“Oh, forgot to tell you, Ma. We’re going to Studio C again. They invited us to come back to see Walk Off the Earth.” He was thrilled. It was one of his favorite bands, and he would have the opportunity to see them up close and even meet them. “It starts at noon, so if they’re not on time at the clinic, I’m out of there.”
“Seriously? Zach, what’s really more important?” I teased.
“Do you even have to ask? Geez, Ma. Duh,” he came back. He knew the real treatment for what ailed him. So did I.
The next week he managed to take an hour to drop in at his first-grade cousin Amelia’s school to surprise her for her birthday and read her class a story. He had been reluctant to go because he was tired and really just wanted to nap. But as we walked down the halls of the school and saw the excited faces of the children when they saw who had entered their school, I could see the energy it produced in him. It was sweet to see the reactions of the children.
“Is that Zach Sobiech?” we heard whispered as we made our way to Amelia’s classroom. Little ones as young as kindergarten came to a dead stop, jaws dropped, as they walked to their next class and caught a glimpse of Zach.
One of the teachers popped out of her room and called after us. “Zach Sobiech?!” She invited us to drop by her classroom after we had finished reading to Amelia’s class.
The look on Amelia’s face when we stepped into the room after the teacher had announced that the class had a “surprise reader” was precious. She turned beet red as she walked across the room and gave Zach a big hug. She loved him dearly, even from the time she was a baby. We stopped by her brother Owen’s class as well, and then saw Ian, her oldest brother, in the lunchroom. The little ones knew Zach wouldn’t be around much longer, and this visit meant the world to them.
JEFF DUNN, OUR PHOTOGRAPHER, WAS A GODSEND. HE HAD BEEN our photographer for two years now. He was interested in adding video production to his business, so he offered to make two of A Firm Handshake’s songs, “Sandcastles” and “Star Hopping,” into music videos.
Jeff had a vision of Zach and Sammy floating in a pool with a guitar for the “Sandcastles” video. It was difficult and physically taxing as it required Sammy and Zach to be in a pool for hours dressed in jeans and shirts. Zach was exhausted by the time we got home, and he slept for hours. But when he got up from his nap, he was ready for more adventure.
It had been a long winter and a hard one. By now it was mid-March, when Minnesota starts to warm up and the end of winter is near. But winter didn’t want to let go. The temperatures had been bone-chilling cold and the snow just wouldn’t stop. We were all suffering from intense cabin fever, crawling the walls and praying that some sign of spring would come soon.
One afternoon, Zach came upstairs after his nap. Amy would be over any minute and dinner was ready to put on the table, but he had something he wanted to ask me, so we sat down in the family room.
“Mom, if I’m still around on my birthday, can I go on a cruise with my friends?” he asked.
My heart broke. His birthday was May 3, six weeks away—an eternity. I was certain he already knew the answer: there was no way I could let him go. He already struggled so much and barely had enough energy to do a couple of outings a week, let alone a trip. But I couldn’t tell him that as he sat there looking so hopeful.
“I’ll think about it,” I replied. There had to be some way we could get him out of this cold, depressing weather and feel the warmth of the sun again. I wondered if he just needed to feel summer one last time.
Later that evening, Dan Seeman called me. We had been conspiring with Zach to figure out a unique way for him to ask Amy to the senior prom that was six weeks away, the day after his birthday. All the other boys had asked their dates back in January. But Zach had put off asking Amy because he didn’t know if he would be well enough to go or, for that matter, still alive, and he didn’t want her to plan for it and be heartbroken, with a dress in her closet she would never wear. The radiation treatments had slowed the tumors some, and though he got sicker with each passing day, it seemed like he might actually be able to go.
“So, I’m wondering if you should ask Amy to prom,” I had probed. There had been a lot of prom talk among their friends when they visited the weekend before, and I knew he had to be thinking about it.
“Yeah. I was wondering about that too. What do you think?” There is nothing more pleasing to a mom than to have a son ask for advice. Prom advice was the crème de la crème!
“I think you should go for it. Amy should have the chance to do all the fun stuff that comes before prom, all the planning and shopping that a girl does. If you end up too sick to go, then so be it; but at least she had the chance to dream.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. At this point, I think it would be worse to miss out because I didn’t even ask than to miss it because I was too sick. How do you think I should ask her?”
How a guy asked a girl to prom was everything. Some of Zach’s friends had gone to great lengths to ask their girls to prom. Mitch went so far as to stage a carjacking. Just when his girlfriend thought it was real, the fake offender held up a sign that read “Will you go to prom with me?” After she slapped him in the face, she said yes.
Sammy’s date set up a scene straight out of a musical. When she entered the choir room one morning, she was pushed into a desk chair with wheels and pushed down the hallway of the high school. As she passed, a flash mob of friends poured out of classrooms and joined in as nearly one hundred kids sang “You’re the One That I Want” from the Grease soundtrack. At the end of the hallway her future prom date stood waiting with a sign that asked if she would be his date for prom.
Needless to say, Zach had his work cut out for him.
“Well, you know some pretty cool people who have some pretty cool connections. Maybe you should tap into them,” I suggested. It would have to be something simple but unique. “How about asking Dan if you could somehow get on the radio and ask Amy? You certainly have friends in radio these days.”
Zach raised his eyebrows and thought for a moment. “That would be cool. Actually, that’s a great idea.”
Now I was on the phone with Dan working out the details.
“How is Zach doing?” he asked. “I haven’t seen him since the Varsity. I know he had some tough scan results not long after. How is the radiation going?”
“He’s doing okay. He’s tired most of the time; the radiation really wipes him out. But he’s pretty happy. He’s getting a little spring fever, and he really wants to go someplace warm. The winter is just dragging him down.”
“He should come to Fort Myers with me! I leave on Sunday and come back on Tuesday. It would be the perfect opportunity for him to get away for a bit. You and Rob could come with him.” Dan always came through with some amazing thing he could offer Zach. It was hard sometimes to believe that this man who had made such an impact on Zach’s life had only known him for four months.
“That would be perfect!” I don’t know why, but I was still surprised by God’s timing in bringing even the smallest things together. There always seemed to be someone that God was moving into the right place at the right time.
“Can Amy come?” Zach asked as soon as I told him. She’d been in New York attending a journalism class for a week at Columbia, and he missed her. I realized that week
how much I missed her when she was gone too. Zach relied on her to keep him steady and positive; without her presence, he was feeling a little like a boat without an anchor in a raging sea. Without Amy around, Zach seemed lost.
Rob accompanied Zach and Amy to Fort Myers, and I stayed home with Alli, Sam, and Grace. Amy was home from New York less than twenty-four hours before she was back at the airport on her way out of town again. The trip was a whirlwind of activity packed into just a few days’ time. They went to a restaurant that served alligator (Amy stuck with chicken); they went to a Twins spring training game, and Dan set up a meeting with several of the players. Zach’s favorite time was the afternoon that he and Amy spent on the beach building sandcastles. When they got home on Tuesday night, Zach looked refreshed and content. He’d gotten to experience a little bit of summer in the midst of a hard, cold winter that refused to loosen its grip. And he got to experience it with his best girl by his side.
THE DAY AFTER ZACH GOT HOME FROM FLORIDA, WE DID SOME retakes for the “Sandcastles” video and shot the whole “Star Hopping” video too. It was a day filled with great energy, but it really wiped out Zach. He needed to go home between shoots to take a three-hour nap before filming the final scene, which required him to climb a ladder onto a rooftop and dance and sing in the cold March air. It was a nerve-racking moment for me, but so much fun for the kids. Later Sammy commented that singing with Zach on that rooftop would be one of the most cherished moments of her life.
We were at a point in Zach’s life where it felt like the last few miles of a marathon. He had run so hard and for so long that his energy was running low, but the finish line was in sight, so he pressed on to accomplish as much as he possibly could. There was a part of me that wanted to put a stop to everything. I knew he didn’t want to waste his time away, sitting and waiting for death to come, but I was seeing the toll it was taking on him and wondered if he was doing all of this for himself or if it was really just for us.
Fly a Little Higher Page 24