Zach and Amy walked in the door about midnight. They were both beaming and bursting with energy.
“Hey, Mom, Amy and I are going to have some of that ice cream the Seemans brought yesterday.” I stood, shocked, as they headed downstairs. I hadn’t seen either one of them this happy and refreshed in a long time. I followed them downstairs and grilled them for details.
“Well! How did it go?”
“It was perfect,” Amy said as she sat next to Zach on the couch in their usual spots. “The dinner was amazing. All our food was ready to go when we got there because my mom had called ahead with our order. The staff was so nice to us. They knew ‘Clouds’ and were excited to meet Zach.”
“Yeah. They even comped our meal,” Zach said.
“How was the dance?” I asked.
“It was fun,” Amy answered. “Everyone was so happy to see Zach. It was pretty funny when we walked into the room; one by one we could see faces turn toward us as the word spread that we were there. Zach had people coming up to him all night,” she said as she turned to look at his face.
“It was nice to see everyone again.” He hadn’t seen most of his classmates for almost two months, since he’d stopped attending school.
“I’m so glad you two had such a great time,” I said as I rose from the couch. “Who wants some ice cream?” They both raised their hands.
I set the bowls down in front of them, kissed them both good night, told them to be good, and went off to bed. It had been a weird day. But it was also a day of small miracles. The little kind that we sometimes miss if we aren’t looking for them.
I’ve learned to be watchful.
Thirty-Six
May 9, 2013
ROB AND I DECIDED WE NEEDED TO GO TO THE CEMETERY AND PICK out a plot for the burial. We were both crabby before we went. Rob wanted to wait for a time when the church secretary could walk around with us, and I didn’t.
“We have the map,” I reasoned. “Let’s just go and get the general lay of the land and at least figure out what section we want to be in.”
It was a nice day, the cemetery was only a few minutes away, and Zach was resting comfortably with Amy at his side, so Rob finally agreed to go. We got out of the car, and I opened the sheets of paper, three of them taped together, showing all the available real estate with three or more plots circled in red.
“There are eight available over there,” I said, double-checking the map.
“Nope,” Rob said with barely a glance.
“Okay . . .” I looked back down at the map. “There are two up along that road, next to that big black monument.”
He regarded the space for a moment. “Nope.”
I took a deep breath. I could feel the irritation building up in me. This is how it worked with us sometimes. I would throw out ideas, and he would shoot them down without any real reason. Selecting baby names had gone that way, and choosing a house—the same thing. It drove me a little crazy.
“Okeydokey. Let’s walk down this way,” I said, doing my best to keep the edge out of my voice as I walked to a grove of trees. “It looks like . . . one, two, three”—I counted out the plots from the road to the tree that was noted on the map—“these four here or . . . one, two, three, four . . . these four here are available.”
He walked around for a little while, looked up at the sky, then turned around a few times. “I like it here, but I don’t like those.”
“Why?” I couldn’t take it any longer. “Why do you like that one, but not those? They’re the same exact trees, just opposite from one another. I don’t get it.”
“I like the way the shade lands on this side,” he said, a little surprised by the irritation in my voice.
“Why does it matter?”
“I want to like the place I’m going to be buried,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted, softening a little. “I was thinking more about where I want to be standing at Zach’s grave.”
We finally worked it out and found the perfect spot. It was far enough from the road, but close enough to see as we drove by. And it had nice shade in the summer. It was a pretty spot.
ZACH WANTED TO SEE IRON MAN 3 SO HE, SAM, ALLI, AND AMY WENT to the afternoon show. By the time he got home he was wiped out and spent the rest of the day in bed. The only time he got up for two days was to shower. Then he went right back to the couch where he spent the rest of the day.
JOURNAL ENTRY
May 11, 2013
The old Zach, with all his boundless energy and high spirits, is gone, buried under disease. I miss him. He still fights for it, to get it back. He tries to sit up when people visit. He tries to participate in the conversations. He tries to laugh. But his strength is gone. His world is small and getting smaller each day. There is no room for nonsense. He is being refined. And we are being conditioned to let go.
ZACH SPENT MOTHER’S DAY SLEEPING ON THE COUCH BUT MANAGED to sign the card Alli bought for me. “Love you so much, Zach,” he wrote. Alli told me he pondered for a long time before he wrote it.
Sammy, Mitch, Reed, and some of his other friends came to sit with him and keep Amy company. He didn’t sit up anymore and only occasionally threw out a comment or two. He mostly just listened.
His grandparents came to sit with him. He tried to stay awake and converse. He managed for a while, then fell asleep.
Rob stayed downstairs with him during the day, sitting quietly or watching television.
I would go down periodically to help him change his medication patches. My time with him was at night, after everyone else had gone to bed.
Alli, Sam, and Grace tried to sit with him. It felt weird. Like they were waiting for him to die.
Daisy lay at the top of the stairs and wouldn’t go down anymore. Zach was different. He was leaving. And she knew it.
Amy held her post daily and for hours at the end of the couch wrapped in a blanket, guarding her from the freezing air of a fan that blew on her and Zach constantly. It would ease the feeling of suffocating, the hospice nurse told us.
My sister Maria brought her baby, Henry. Zach reached out to touch his face. We took video so Henry could see when he was older.
Father Miller came to anoint him. Eyes shut, Zach lifted his open hands eager to receive the scented oil.
The adoration chapel at church filled with people. They prayed.
We watched and we waited.
JOURNAL ENTRY
May 18, 2013
I’m sitting here with Zach. Watching him as he lingers between sleep and wake.
His hands are in perpetual motion. At times he seems to be playing his guitar, at other times he turns knobs on an invisible amp. Now he is waving at someone. There is a smile on his face. Now a frown.
He has a foot in this world and one in eternity.
AMY, SAMMY, MITCH, AND REED CAME. I CALLED THEM. IT WOULDN’T be long, I said.
They flipped through the booklets the hospice social worker gave us. They read about what to expect as they watched their friend die.
Sammy got up and went into Zach’s room. She was cold and needed to borrow one of his sweatshirts. She pulled the University of Minnesota sweatshirt over her head. She sat down on the bed and began to cry.
The sweatshirt, the rumpled bed, the cluttered bedside table, the recording equipment, the leather-bound notebook, the clothes strewn about, the backpack still full of books, the posters on the wall, the football trophies, the six pairs of shoes, the guitars hanging on the wall, the disco ball. She said there was more of Zach in his room than there was of him in his own body. She could feel him leaving, and she missed him already.
JOURNAL ENTRY
May 19, 2013
I feel like a woman in labor, pacing the house with my mind focused on the big, painful event about to ensue.
Rob and I are alone with Zach. He has been lying on the couch for several days now. His hands have been working for several minutes waving to unseen people,
playing a guitar that is not in his hands. He floats between worlds. Rob tells me that earlier in the morning, when I was at Mass with the girls, it looked like Zach was shooting hoops and throwing a football. We look over and Zach has his arm extended and hand held out like he is expecting someone to grab it. I stand up and sit on the coffee table in front of him. “He is smiling,” I whisper to Rob. And I put my hand in his open palm. His hand is warm as it closes around mine and squeezes it tight. He smiles for a bit longer, then his expression shifts to utter sadness in a split second. I squeeze his hand and hold it to my face. So warm. Still so strong. His fingertips are rough and calloused from years of sliding on guitar strings.
His breathing is rapid. Forty breaths a minute. His pulse is too. A hundred twenty a minute. He’ll be leaving soon.
“Zach,” I bend down and whisper. “I love you. I will miss you so very much when you are gone.” The tears come, uninhibited, and fall on his blanket. “But you don’t have to stay here, you don’t have to hang on for us. We’ll be okay. It’s okay to go.”
His eyes remain closed, but he hears and he nods his head. I kiss his hand and set it on his chest. I walk to Rob, and he holds me for a long while. Then I leave so he can say his own good-bye.
Rob comes upstairs, his eyes puffy, and he sits listlessly on the couch. Then Alli goes down. Zach tells her he doesn’t think he can go on, that he doesn’t think he will make it to the wedding. She sobs. She hates seeing him so sad and wants desperately to make him smile. She tells him she doesn’t want him to die, but if he has to, to remember that his suffering was just like collecting gold coins in the video game Mario. Dying was like leveling up. He smiles. Alli holds his hand for a while, then Sam goes down and tells Zach that he will never, ever forget him, and he promises to visit his brother’s grave every May 3, on Zach’s birthday.
Grace is out at a basketball game with a friend. She isn’t supposed to be home for a few hours, but I call her and tell her to come home early.
“He’s not good,” I tell her. “You should probably come home.”
I’m downstairs with him when I hear the front door open and close. Grace wastes no time and runs downstairs. I watch as she throws herself down by Zach’s side and grabs his hand.
“I’m here,” is all she says.
He lies there for a moment, then turns to her and opens his eyes. And he looks at his baby sister, whom he has looked after and protected for fourteen years. His baby sister, whom he loves. And he sits up and hands her the remote to the television.
“You can watch whatever you want, Grace. It doesn’t really matter to me. We’ll watch together.” He moves down the couch to make room for her.
And they watch together. He continues to protect.
May 20, 2013
I WAS SLEEPING ON THE COUCH ACROSS THE ROOM FROM ZACH. I had been there the past two nights. Amy stayed the night and was on the floor next to me. It was five o’clock in the morning when we heard Zach unexpectedly bolt down the hall to the bathroom, shut the door, and lock it. I threw the covers off and ran to the bathroom door to stand vigil in case he needed help. He had been fiercely independent throughout his battle, but now he was weak.
I heard something clatter, then silence. My heart was racing as I fumbled around trying to find the key for the door where I’d stowed it months ago, on the wainscoting ledge.
“Mom! I need help,” he cried.
I popped the door open with the key. He was sitting on the stool we had placed in front of the sink.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I rushed in.
“I can’t breathe.” He stood, then collapsed into my arms.
“Amy,” I yelled. “Get Rob!”
I lowered Zach onto the floor, then ran to the kitchen to get the Ativan. I had tried for days to get him to take the Ativan to help with the panicky feeling that came with his shortness of breath. He refused. It made him too groggy, he said, and he didn’t want to lose the little time he had left to sleep. But now he was panicking and needed the drug desperately. I got to the refrigerator, yanked the door open, and plucked the little brown bottle from the top shelf of the door. Where is the measuring dropper? . . . I had just seen it yesterday . . . Where is it! I started throwing things off the counter. Panic was creeping in, and my mind was freezing up.
“Stop it,” I scolded myself out loud. “You don’t have the time to lose it.”
I remembered I’d set the dropper on the table the night before, out in the open where it was easily seen. I grabbed the phone, picked up the dropper, and ran back downstairs and gave Zach the medicine. Then I called 911. We needed to get him into his bed, and I knew he wouldn’t want Rob and me to do it. He hated the thought of burdening us and he would try to help, but he didn’t have the strength. There was comfort knowing my friends from the fire department would be walking through the door in just minutes. I needed them.
While I was on the phone with the dispatcher, Rob had gotten Sam and Grace out of bed. Alli had heard the ruckus and come from her room. She knelt on the floor next to Zach as we waited for the crew to arrive.
“Remember the sea turtle, Zach? The one you saw in Mexico? Remember how peaceful it was, how beautiful?” She held his hand and tried to soothe him. Zach nodded, staring straight ahead but not seeing as he gasped for air.
Amy knelt on the floor opposite Alli and stroked Zach’s hair. Grace sat next to Alli, silently crying, and Sam stood behind her. There was hardly any space to move. Rob moved a shelf out of the way so that the fire department could get in with the stretcher.
I had my pager and heard the crew check in on-scene. I went to the door to let them in.
“He’s on the floor in the bathroom,” I instructed. “We need to get him into his bed across the hall. It’s going to be tough using a longboard, though. It won’t make it around the corner.”
The kids and Rob cleared out of the bathroom as I knelt by Zach’s side.
“Honey, the fire department is here. They are going to move you to your bed.” I stroked his hair. “Don’t help. Just try to relax. They know what they’re doing.” He nodded in response, fighting for every breath. I stepped out of the room as the crew swarmed in. Within a minute or two, they had Zach in his bed.
“Do you need anything else, Laura?” Jim, the assistant chief, asked.
“No,” I answered. “I just needed you here. We just needed help.”
He nodded in understanding. Then the crew packed up everything and left us.
THE ATIVAN BEGAN TO WORK. ZACH WAS CALM. HIS BREATHING slowed.
We were all there: Rob, Alli, Sam, Grace, Amy, and I. All of us sat around him as he lay on his bed. We prayed. We told him how much we loved him. I hummed a hymn while I stroked his hair. Amy kissed him. We told him it was okay to go. We would see him again.
And then he died.
My beautiful, precious boy died.
ONE BY ONE, WE LEFT THE ROOM.
Rob and I stood in the hall, outside his bedroom door, and held each other. There was an odd sense of accomplishment mixed with the horror of what we’d just been through. But now he was gone.
“We did it,” I said to Rob as I rested my head on his shoulder. “We held him until he stepped into eternity.”
“His suffering is over,” Rob whispered, “and he’s gone.”
Alli stepped out of the room and joined our embrace.
“You are the best parents he could have asked for,” she sobbed. “You were both so strong through it all.”
Amy was curled up on the couch with Zach’s favorite blanket. I sat down next to her and patted the seat for Grace to cuddle up next to me.
“Do you mind if I call my mom?” Amy asked.
“Oh, sweetheart. Not at all,” I replied. “You need her.”
Sam quietly emerged from Zach’s room and sat down on the couch next to Alli.
“Six thirty-five,” he said. “He died at six thirty-five.”
I was surprised at how late it was and yet couldn’t be
lieve how much had happened in a short amount of time. Time had seemed to stop as we sat through that last hour and a half with Zach. I was grateful that Sam had thoughtfully taken note.
After a few moments of silence, I got up from the couch and walked upstairs with the phone in my hand. Zach’s friends would be leaving for school soon. They would need to know that Zach was gone.
WE HAD A PLAN, A “CALLING TREE,” TO REACH THOSE WHO SHOULD hear the news first, before the media was alerted. Anne, Sammy’s mom, woke Sammy and told her the news, then called Zach’s closest high school friends before they left for school, as well as the school counselors and the local paper. My friend Stephanie, who had bathed with us in the water at Lourdes, called St. Croix Catholic School and a few of our close friends. I called Justin Baldoni and Mindy Dykes at CCRF, who alerted Dan Seeman, Karl Demer, Scott Herold, and Adam Gislason.
Within a couple of hours, our house began to fill with family and friends and food . . . lots of food.
We kept Zach’s body with us, in his bedroom, for several hours so we could each have a chance to be with him, alone.
It was nice, that time with him. I held his still-warm hand to my cheek and kissed it. That precious warmth. I didn’t want to waste it, so I just held his hand until it was cool. And I cried tears of relief and agony.
He was free.
But he was gone.
The funeral home sent a van to take him away. As they carried him toward the front door, I stopped them and kissed Zach one last time. The house full of people was silent as we watched the van pull away.
How many times had I watched as Zach drove away down that very same road? And how many prayers had I offered up for his safe return?
I wouldn’t have to worry anymore.
He was safe. Forever.
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