Fly a Little Higher Page 2

  I started with the couch. Daisy, our miniature dachshund, stood close by, knowing that Zach’s couch was always a good place to visit if she was looking for a broken cookie. It was the first place she would go in the morning when she was let out of her crate.

  To put it mildly, Zach was a slob. A huge slob. Wrappers, chip crumbs, bottles, and cans lay everywhere. It was easy to spot his roost because it was the only place on the couch that wasn’t cluttered. It used to drive me crazy the way that kid could leave a mess; I didn’t mind as much anymore. There’s something about knowing your child is going to die that causes you to cherish stupid things, like cleaning up their unreasonable messes.

  Mixed in with the monstrosity of a mess were folded pieces of paper, notebooks, and stacks of various assignment-looking papers. I didn’t want to throw anything important away, so I opened each piece and looked it over carefully. After about a half hour, I’d made some pretty good headway—the couch was clean, the coffee table was cleared of debris, and the room smelled more of fresh air and less of goats-who-had-eaten-tacos. I had one last pile of crumpled notes to go through, so I lifted the pile onto my lap and began sorting.

  About halfway through, I picked up a sheet of notebook paper that had been folded multiple times. These words were written in Zach’s handwriting across the page:

  I fell down down down into this dark and lonely hole, there was no one there to care about me anymore, I needed a way to climb and grab a hold of the edge you were sitting there holding a rope

  And that’s how “Clouds” rolled into my life.

  Two

  ON A SPRING EVENING SHORTLY AFTER ZACH’S FIRST BIRTHDAY, I was making dinner while he scooted around the kitchen on his bottom, his preferred method of travel. As I was popping a casserole into the oven, I suddenly realized I hadn’t heard Zach in a while. I checked around the kitchen table, then the living room.

  He was neither place, so I turned my attention downstairs to Sam and Alli who were playing “Lava,” a game that entailed hopping between couch cushions they had spread out on the floor. One misstep meant landing on carpet-lava and being burned alive.

  “Hey, guys,” I called down. “Is Zach down there with you?”

  “No,” Alli called up breathlessly as she hopped cushions. “He’s not down here!”

  As I turned to check upstairs, I caught sight of the open sliding screen door that led from the dining area of the kitchen directly to a three-foot drop to our backyard. The glass door had been open to let the fresh spring air in, but the screen door had been shut. I ran to the door to check the backyard where I saw Zach, who had safely scooted about fifteen feet into the yard, kneeling at a T-ball tee. He had a brown plastic bat in one hand and a big white plastic ball in the other. I watched as he carefully balanced the ball on the tee and, while still kneeling, swung and hit the ball a good ten feet.

  I learned to lock the door after that.

  On his second birthday, Zach was given a three pack of toddler-sized balls: a soccer ball, a football, and a basketball. One of our favorite home videos is of him opening that gift and shaking with excitement when he saw what was in the package—he couldn’t get the wrapping paper off fast enough.

  Zach especially loved football, and like his dad, his favorite team was the Minnesota Vikings. From the time Zach was a toddler, he would sit on Rob’s lap, and they would watch the games together. It was their thing, their way of spending time together. As he got older, Zach and his dad would connect by talking sports, but when he was little, Zach would act the plays out. While the game was on, he would have his little toy football ready and pretend to hike the ball, or he would tuck it into the crook of his arm and pretend he was going in for a touchdown. One of his first words was “bootball.”

  In our family, we had a one-sport-a-year policy, and Zach had chosen football from the fourth grade through the sixth grade. His fifth-grade team won the championship game played at the Vikings stadium, and his sixth-grade team came within a touchdown of winning the championship. It was a glorious time for Zach, and he proudly displayed the trophies until the day he died. The Catholic school where he went did not have a middle school football team, so in order to play, he had to walk to the public junior high school a few blocks away after school. He didn’t enjoy it much; the tone of the coaching and the attitudes of some of the players were not his style—too much emphasis on individual success at any cost and not enough on team building. That was his last year playing football.

  Zach spent nine years attending St. Croix Catholic School, kindergarten through eighth grade. While not every child who attends a faith-based school embraces the education, Zach did. He loved his Catholic faith and was comfortable with exploring it and growing in it. Part of this had to do with his class. They were a unique group of kids who had decided early on they would have no cliques. If there was a party, then everyone was invited—no exclusions. And they made a conscious effort not to gossip but rather to build each other up. By the end of the eighth grade, the group of fifty kids was very close and cared deeply for one another.

  Zach, who was so naturally empathetic and willing to see the good in those around him, blossomed in this environment. Surrounded by people he knew cared for him, he was able not only to be open about his faith but also to try new things with confidence. He had taken an interest in music and, in particular, guitar; so when he was in the sixth grade, my husband, Rob, and I gave him his first electric guitar. It was a cheap guitar I’d picked up on sale; I wasn’t sure it was something he would retain an interest in and didn’t want to invest in a more expensive guitar until he’d proven he was going to stick with it. He surprised me with his enthusiasm and dedication. He was a natural and spent hours practicing new songs. He’d found a new passion.

  In the seventh grade, after a year of taking guitar lessons, he and his friends Reed and Adam played for the first time in front of an audience at the school talent show. I was so proud of him, standing up there in front of the whole school and playing like a pro. I was amazed at his confidence and obvious love for the stage; every time he looked up at the crowd, a huge grin would break out on his face. When Zach and his friends finished their song, the crowd went wild, clapping and cheering. The noise was deafening. Kindergarten children and even some of the older kids approached him after the show and asked for Zach’s autograph. It was his first taste of performing on stage, and he fell in love with it.

  Sports were still a big part of his life. Zach was asked to join the basketball team in the seventh grade. The team needed another player, and Zach’s height was a definite advantage. He jumped at the opportunity.

  The first year went well. He picked up on the game quickly, and the team ended the year with an equal number of wins and losses. By eighth grade, the team was solid, and they went undefeated, ending the year by winning the championship, despite half the players coming down with the flu. It was a glorious end to the year. Zach was elated! He couldn’t wait to play more, and I looked forward to more too. I had dreams of watching Zach running down the court in the high school colors and me cheering from the stands.

  But there was a problem.

  Though we didn’t know it yet, a little cell in Zach had changed and become ugly and unholy. It decided not to follow the rules cells should follow but decided to make up its own. It grew and divided into more and more rebels. They were sneaky and quiet for a long time, just long enough to make a nice little army.

  Three

  ON NOVEMBER 13, 2009, CANCER SHOWED ITSELF LIKE A DEMON peeking out of a dark bedroom closet. It was the disease I thought would never haunt our family—we had no family history with that monster lurking in the background. As it turned out, sometimes the things we think are impossibilities are the things God uses to turn our world upside down. We learn to hang on tight that way. We learn to trust. Which is why, from the very beginning, I knew cancer would be as much of a spiritual journey as it was a physical battle.

  August 2009

  LATE
THAT SUMMER, A FEW WEEKS BEFORE ZACH WOULD BEGIN HIS freshman year at the public high school, he and his older sister, Alli, went for a run. Alli had just graduated from high school and was headed to college in a few weeks. She was ready to take that next step into adulthood, to move away from home and start working toward a career in journalism. Knowing that she would be leaving soon, Alli wanted to spend some time with her younger brother. She’d been busy with work all summer, and Zach had spent a good portion of his vacation lounging on the couch in the family room in front of the television. They were both in serious need of some exercise.

  “Hey, Zach,” Alli called down to the family room where Zach was clicking through the channels, “it’s a nice day. Let’s go for a run.”

  He set the remote down and reluctantly got up from the couch. He knew there was no point in blowing Alli off. She wouldn’t allow it. Alli stood at the top of the steps dressed in running shorts and a faded tank top she’d picked up at the Goodwill. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Zach towered over her five-foot frame, but it was he who looked up to her. She was tenacious and driven. When she set her mind to something, there was no stopping her.

  “Okay. I’ll be up in a minute,” he mumbled. He lumbered up the stairs, his bony body topped with an unruly mop of blond curls.

  They left the house and, after a half-hour run, stumbled back in the front door.

  “See! That wasn’t so bad.” Alli nudged him in the ribs. “We need to get in shape. I’m going to be walking around campus for the next nine months, and you’ve got to get ready for basketball if you want to have a chance at getting on the team. It’s not like St. Croix Catholic, Zach. You’re actually going to have to try out if you want a chance on the team.” She walked to the kitchen sink and filled a glass with water.

  “Yeah, I know,” Zach replied, still catching his breath. “I’m not too worried about it. I’m probably taller than half the guys who’ll be trying out.” He loved the fact that he had inches on most of the kids his age and was a little prideful about it.

  “It’s not just height that’s going to get you on the team, Zach. It’s skill.” Alli was good about making sure her brother didn’t get too big of a head. “And you’re not gaining any skill by hanging out on the couch all day. Ya gotta get out there and get some exercise,” she teased as she walked down the steps to her bedroom.

  “Come on, Al, it’s not like you’re out there running every day,” he shot back.

  Zach made a quick trip down to his bedroom and emerged with a two-liter bottle of some unnatural-looking bright blue drink. He always kept a hidden stash of various drinks he’d purchased on sale at the local gas station; he just couldn’t pass up a deal. He planted himself at the kitchen counter next to Grace as I prepared dinner.

  “So, Ma, I was thinking. There are, like, billions of earthworms in the ground and each of them poops. If you think about it, pretty much all the soil in the world is basically earthworm poop.” He loved sharing unusual facts. He had a collection of dog-eared copies of sports and science fact books, and his favorite television channels focused on the same topics.

  “Discovery Channel?” I asked.

  “No. I was just thinking about it, all those worms.”

  “Not so sure that’s true. I’m thinking there is more to the soil than just earthworm poo.” I knew he was looking for a debate. “I think bacteria has a bigger part to play in the whole soil scheme.”

  “No way. Think about it. It’s the worms that are little soil-making machines. They eat the rotting stuff, then poop it out, and voilà! Soil,” he retorted.

  “Nope. Not buyin’ it, Zach. I’m sticking with bacteria.”

  He furrowed his brow in mock discouragement, a sparkle in his eye, and slapped his open hand on the countertop.

  “Don’t test me, woman,” he scolded in a crotchety-old-man voice.

  Grace and I busted out laughing. Zach didn’t take himself too seriously, and most times would handle defeat with humor. If he couldn’t win, he’d go down laughing.

  Rob walked in the front door, set his keys and wallet on the shelf in the closet, and kicked his dress shoes off into the closet.

  “Hey,” I said as I tossed a hot pad on the table and set a pot of noodles on it. “How was your day?” I asked.

  “It was okay.” He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, then took a seat. I wondered if he would surprise me one day by declaring he’d had a wonderful day. But exaggerating wasn’t something Rob was prone to; he was much too conservative for that.

  “Hey, Dad,” Sam said as he stepped into the kitchen.

  “Hi, Sam. What have you been up to today?”

  “Not much. Just reading up on an Airsoft gun I’m thinking about buying. All my friends’ guns surpass my gun’s speed and distance. If I’m going to be competitive, I need a better gun,” Sam responded as he pulled out his usual chair at the table.

  Zach greeted Rob as he walked to the table and sat down. He hadn’t complained of anything, but I noticed he was favoring his left side and there was a slight hitch in his step. Well, of course he’s sore, I thought. He hasn’t moved all summer! I set the salad on the table and, once everyone settled, we said our mealtime prayer, then proceeded to fill our plates and continued talking about the events of the day.

  “How was your run?” I asked as I got up to retrieve the Parmesan cheese from the refrigerator.

  “Great! It felt so good to just get out and move,” Alli answered. She piled salad on her plate, then took a bite. Grace sat quietly and consumed her pasta. She loved pasta.

  “How about you, Zach? Did it feel good to get out there again and move a little? Basketball tryouts are coming up,” I said in my best not-a-lecture voice.

  “Yeah, Zach. You need to prepare,” Rob chimed in a teasing tone. “E is for Effort!” It was a saying that didn’t make much sense, but Rob used it often. “Don’t expect things to be handed to you. You have to work for them.”

  I rolled my eyes and smirked at Alli. Rob had hounded her with that same phrase through high school. It drove her crazy, but she also found it endearing.

  Zach shrugged his shoulders as he loaded noodles onto his plate. “I know. I’ll start going for more runs. It felt pretty good, I guess, except at the end when my hip started to hurt.”

  “I saw you limping. Do you think you overdid it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I probably just went out longer than I should have. It’s been awhile.”

  “Well, pop some ibuprofen, and go out again tomorrow,” Rob said. “You don’t want to be a quitter.”

  “Maybe rest a day, then go out again; loosen things up slowly,” I interjected. “But let me know if it keeps hurting so we can get it looked at.”

  “Okay,” he nodded and took a bite of his food.

  A week later, two weeks before the school year started, Zach came to me after I got home from work. He was in his basketball shorts that barely hung on his narrow hips and his favorite Gibson T-shirt.

  “Mom, my hip still hurts.” There was concern in his big, round green eyes. “I thought it might be getting better, but it’s not. It hurts more now than it did a week ago; it just keeps getting worse.”

  I wasn’t about to blow this off like I’d done earlier in the year when Zach showed me his black-and-blue hand right as he was leaving to walk to the bus stop. He’d hurt it the night before while wrestling with Sam. “It’s fine,” I’d insisted as I shoved him out the door and waved good-bye. The school nurse called a few hours later and said she thought it looked broken. Turned out, it was.

  Taking Zach’s concern seriously this time, I called our clinic and made an appointment with a family practice physician who had an interest in sports medicine. Aside from the broken thumb incident, it had been ages since Zach had needed to go to the doctor. He hardly ever got sick.

  “Whoa,” the doctor exclaimed as he walked into the examination room. “What size shoes are those?” he asked as he took a seat a
t a little desk with a computer. He was a tall guy himself with some pretty big feet.

  “Fourteen,” Zach answered with a grin. “Same as my age.” He loved his big feet. I wasn’t a huge fan of them, especially when I was tripping over his haphazardly kicked-off shoes in front of the door. Zach and the doctor bantered back and forth about different style shoes and where the best places were to shop for the tough-to-find bigger sizes. Then the doctor got down to business.

  “So what brings you in today, Zach?” the doctor asked.

  “My hip feels sort of funny, sort of like there’s something in there,” he said as he pointed to his left hip. “Not on the outside, but on the inside, when I walk and run.”

  “What about when you’re just taking it easy, when you’re relaxing?”

  “It just sort of aches sometimes, but not all the time.”

  “Does it keep you up at night?”

  “No, not really. Sometimes it aches when I lay down in bed, but it doesn’t keep me from sleeping.”

  “Okay. Well, let’s get an X-ray and see if we can figure out what’s going on,” the doctor said as he wrote up an order, then pointed down the hall to where we needed to go. Once the X-ray was done, we met the doctor in an X-ray viewing room. He popped the film onto a lighted viewing board on the wall and began looking it over.

  “Well,” he said and paused as he concentrated on the hip, his nose inches from the film, “there’s nothing obvious. I don’t see any cracks, breaks, or deformities.”

  I looked at the X-ray too, and with my untrained eye didn’t see anything obvious either. “So what should we do?” I asked.

  “There might be a soft tissue injury, possibly the hip flexor.” He scribbled out a referral and handed it to me. “I’m going to send you to physical therapy. They should be able to give you some exercises that will help with the pain and strengthen the muscles,” he said to Zach.