ForeverMissed
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This memorial website was created in memory of our loved one, Sulkowski Zachary Lech, 23 years old, born on August 7, 1987, and passed away on September 3, 2010. We will remember him forever.

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A year later

September 9, 2011

It has been a year now since the phone call that seems as unreal now as it was then: “Mom, Zach is dead”. “It’s not true,” I shouted, “It cannot be. I just talked to him.” In the days that followed there was no time to organize thoughts: a hurried trip back home; waiting for the autopsy; the service and burial. But a short obituary in the Town Crier does not seem enough for someone who lived his entire life in Sudbury and has passed through my life changing forever my attitudes while alive and now seemingly gone. He left a footprint that I want to share with you.

Zachary Lech Sulkowski was born on August 7, 1987. He was my fourth son, a 6’4” gentle giant, my joy, my friend and my colleague. He attended Haynes School, the Fenn School, and graduated from the Groton School and then from the College of William and Mary with honors in Psychology in May 2009. With plans to attend a graduate/medical school (“Mom, aren’t you glad that we will be in the same field?”), his cell phone is loaded with anatomy reviews and vocabulary builders for grad school entrance exams. He organized a Zoological Society while at Groton.  Later, he was employed by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and then by Harvard’s Regional Primate Center. He worked on research projects at NASA and BWH where he impressed colleagues with his organization, enthusiasm and natural understanding of the scientific process. His passion was for behavioral neuroscience. But that was only one side of Zach. He loved music, and he loved the land. He merged these seemingly disparate desires with ease, playing the piano or riding a horse, and managing his beloved suburban farm with its fresh eggs, goat’s milk and horse boarding.

 

Zach was also a source of counsel. Some of his lessons were taught in his final days.  Despite a serious and life-threatening neck injury sustained earlier that summer, he insisted on making our annual camping trip to Canada, one he hadn’t missed since he was 10 days old. That very first evening there, by the Canadian lake and before we started on the freshly gathered mushroom dinner, he stopped us and said “Let’s be thankful for being here together and for all our blessings,” and when I alluded to minor problems at work, he corrected me “Mom, you always say “But - let’s be unconditionally thankful for what we have.” Tuesday, back in Sudbury, he felt exhausted and said that he overdid it, and when I asked why, he said that he “wanted it to be a family trip and not a trip about him.” On Friday (September 3, 2010), he was found at home by his visiting friend, unresponsive. We may never find out why he died, nor understand why.  At times the pain is unbearable, but this pain is not only about me, it is about a young prematurely terminated life, unfulfilled potentials – a life that needs to be honored. For now I try to heed his lesson, have finished his projects and dedicated scientific papers to him, and I am trying to continue his dream of suburban farming. To friends and teachers of Zach: thank you. A memorial page on Google is under construction. Feel free to visit and share your memories of Zach; he is still with us in spirit in the space/time continuum.

 

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