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Zach's Celebration of Life

April 18, 2021
To all those who knew and cared about Zach, we would like to invite you to his Celebration of Life on August 6th, from 4-6PM at the Blueberry Hill Inn, Vermont. Please share the news with anyone you think would like to attend! 

Visit our Facebook Event Page for more details



Zach was always active, he loved great food, good music, hiking, biking, camping, rooting for the Celtics, and he had a wild sense of humor. On top of all this, he was a talented photographer. Zachary was driven: he was not content to stagnate.

We think Zach would want his Celebration of Life to be fun. It will be a time for his friends and family to gather together to share their happy memories of him, eat some pizza and check out some of his amazing photographs. For those who'd like to, we may even take a short group hike up Blueberry Hill - so dress accordingly!

We hope you'll join us and bring your favorite stories of Zach! 
November 14, 2020
Zach’s poem - guessing he wrote it when he was in his late teens. Leigh found this as she was cleaning up boxes in the attic. His words seem to fit this time right now. 

Happiness does not always prevail
Life is hard
You aren’t always going to have smooth
Water to sail

Happiness does not always prevail
There will be a canopy peak
But you can’t always have a smooth sail
This is why I look to seek

Some days I don’t feel my best
This may be the result of stress
I resort to wilderness
Because I know trees have passed this test

Happiness does not always prevail
There can be canopy peaks
Which you scale
But you cannot always follow the trail

Some days I don’t feel my best
This is when I look to the trees
The wilderness absorbs the stress
Standing tall above, the sun touches the leaves
Beauty of delicate leaves

October 22, 2020
I’ve called Zach “Ez” for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure how it started. It’s strange how that now seems important and I find myself wishing I could ask him if he remembers. I have this vague idea (but may be rewriting history) that I once tried to convince him that his real name was Ezekiel. It wasn’t working and I quickly jumped over to Zachariah for the joke - but not the nickname. The Zachariah part definitely happened, by the way! In any event, he was Ez.

Fast forward many years and Zach also became Uncle Zach, to my kids. Célestine was born first and naming her involved many, MANY discussions. With the seriousness of a first time mother, I was adamant that her name was beautiful and her name was Célestine. No shortening. 

Uncle Zach wasn’t having it. Maybe it was partly to get back at me (!), but he started calling her Cele. It was always said with a giant grin and dancing, what are you going to do about it, eyes. Felix was born a few years later, and naturally he needed a nickname too. “FeFe,” Uncle Zach proclaimed. Nobody else could have gotten away with that - only my baby brother! He knew it, of course, and I’m sure that was part of the fun.

I don’t live in the US and when I first told Zach I was pregnant with Célestine (after congratulating me), he asked, “How’s your kid ever gonna be awesome if they don’t have [their] uncle around?” Well, he was an awesome uncle. I wish my kids had longer with him. I wish I had longer with him. And I wish I had been able to see him with kids of his own. 

Gifts

September 27, 2020
In the human world— while lying in bed at night, or sitting at the computer, poring over photographs and past conversations—  the loss of Zach is a visceral thing. I feel it as a relentless weight on my shoulders; panic like an animal’s; an uncontainable wail threatening to emerge from somewhere deep within. The loss of Zach— in the human world— feels like an unfathomable absence.

And so I go outside. I walk the same path that we walked together countless times throughout our lives, as family and as individuals: past our parents’ garden, the chicken house and the barn, across the long sloped lawn, and into the woods. The leaves are starting to change all at once now. Crows caw freely up above, the afternoon sun has turned golden, and just like that, here he is.

Zach has appeared in so many forms in recent days. He appeared as a wave of comfort washing over me the moment I asked him for a sign, the morning after we received the news. Then later, in the perfectly formed sunbeams made visible by the smoke of our campfire, turning the clearing where a few of us had gathered into a natural cathedral— a living replica of one of Zach’s photographs. And again today, when the ancient leather shoe that he had unearthed during our childhood games appeared before me on the forest floor, the only form in sight that was not covered by leaves, though more than twenty years had passed.

Zach eagerly accepted all of the beauty and mystery that life has to offer, and he gave back with the same eagerness. Those who knew him experienced these gifts in the form of his playfulness, humor, intelligence, curiosity, love, and deep kindness— and in his honest vision as an artist. Some of the words that Zach offered us over the years seem almost prescient, taken in this week’s new light. “I’m water now, slipping through the cloud. I am rain falling,” he wrote more than ten years ago, “I slow to the pace of walking and it’s snowing. And I’m powder and I’m floating.” This summer, he wrote, “I still walk in the woods, in the rain, through the fog, and when the snow’s falling. I walk in nature, near the ocean, and in the mountains. My imagination is still at play thinking of a journey, contemplating history, and curious to the ever-changing ecosystem.”

As we mourn his unimaginable absence in the human world, I think of those words as Zach’s parting gift: a reminder of his timeless, expansive, and vivid presence in the wild and beautiful  places all around us, waiting to be explored.

Little Wiggie Wombat

September 23, 2020
Little Wiggie Wombat, wither shall I wander? Uptown, downtown, all around town!
Zachimo! Zachimo Joe!
Zee Jay
Zach John!
As I mother, the.se were my endearments for Zachary. He was my boy who was always full of play. Full of adventure. As I remember stories and adventures, some specific things come to mind. Some of these have become the stuff of legend, because I have shared them with countless children I have taught
At one point, all four of my children were enrolled in local schools - two in elementary, one in middle school, and I worked at a completely different local elementary school. No one wanted to take the school bus ever, so that meant carefully choreographed mornings. Lunches made? Check. Homework in backpacks? Check. Breakfast eaten? Check. Brush hair, brush teeth? Check-check. And then, okay, let's GO! 
I made the great mistake of letting Zach get toy handcuffs. They were cheap little aluminum ones from Ben Franklin (a local store), with a key to unlock them. Well, one morning as four children and one mother were madly scurrying about, Zach got the idea that it would be fun to lock himself to his bed rails with his handcuffs! (???)
We were all set to go and I called for him, "Zach! Come on let's go!)
"Uhhh, Mom....I need a little help..."
I ran upstairs to his room to see that he had, really and truly, locked himself to his bed. And no one knew where the key was!
After mad scurrying, I decided to fiddle with a large paperclip to try to jostle the lock. No luck. We scavenged the house and finally found the key. I was late for work and each child was late for school.
Multiple calls and tardy notes later, Zachary safely freed from the bed, we headed out the door.
Zach and his siblings were sometimes hard work to parent, but the greatest joy of my life. 
He was a little boy who made me laugh with his playfulness. He made me smile with his gentleness (bedtime stories and cuddles).
He grew into a teenager I prayed for every night. Wild and wooly. Ready to box and imbibe and drive way too fast.
He then became a man, wise and gentle. Filled with love for others and a mission in life. A man with a heart and sense of justice for others and the environment. He was an artist, an athlete, a son, a lover and always an adventurer.
I am not quite sure how to go on now. I am hoping, from wherever he is now, that he will show me the way.
Zachary, I will always love you and it will not be in the past tense.Thank you for letting me be your mother. 

The Woods

September 22, 2020
https://indd.adobe.com/view/ce1572a5-60b1-48a6-afeb-06cd6a67ccf3?fbclid=IwAR2R-hjgeenPkdxlUEHPsuNw_AKtrBZE1BwO9ydd-2W7bXzhqzXpEHBSpL4

Zach's words (from his photography book):

"When I was a kid going into the forest was a place that sparked imagination. My siblings and I would bounce on trees and have sword fights with sticks. We would run away from home and into the woods. Countless hours were captured in the forest. 
I still walk in the woods, in the rain, through the fog, and when the snow’s falling. I walk in nature, near the ocean, and in the mountains. My imagination is still at play thinking of a journey, contemplating history, and curious to the ever-changing ecosystem."
When we were talking about the memories we wanted to include in Zach's obituary, bouncing on trees with Zach and playing in the woods were some of the first things that popped into my mind. Growing up in Vermont, the woods were a feature in our lives. We would run behind our house to explore and pretend together, we would be excited when the field of ferns unfurled in the spring, when the peepers came out back in the bog. If a tree fell, it was an exciting addition to our games. Even as adults, we all love to walk in the woods, and that's exactly what we did the last time I saw Zach. It was February, and snowy. Naturally, Zach started plenty of snowball fights along the way, with that giant grin of his!   
Living abroad means I didn't get to see Zach nearly enough. I was hoping this would change as my kids grew older and travel became easier. It's devastatingly hard to accept that now this will never happen. As I remember what was and think about what should have been, I've found myself looking at all of his photos and his photography book and website, wanting to take in every detail of him. 
Today, I zoomed in to read the words in Zach's book and was surprised to read the quote above. Knowing that one of my happy memories was also one of his, was like a little hug and made me smile for a moment. I love you, Zach. I'll think of you in the woods. 

Golden Birdie

September 20, 2020
Now that he is gone, it has become clear what a presence Zachary was in my life. Memories, images, mannerisms and items appear in my mind at random, out of the blue, involuntarily. Each one of them, however meaningless it would have seemed a month ago, now has weight and makes it obvious what Zach added to my life. There is a windbreaker that has been sitting in the trunk of my car for 13 months. Zachary gave me this when I visited him in Maine on a rainy day. For 13 months this was a piece of clothing that I didn’t need at the moment. Now it is one of the countless reminders of who Zachary was, revealing one angle of his multi-faceted personality—his generosity.

My many memories of Zachary combine to create a rich and complex representation of what he was (and still is) to me. This is unique, created by the peculiar chemistry of two brothers. The memories that others hold of him reveal another unique angle, that created from the chemistry of mother and son, father and son, sister and brother, friend, lover, whatever. By sharing our memories of Zachary, we are revealing new, unseen aspects of his personality to one another. He was a larger person than any one of us could fully grasp alone.

For me, Zach represented activity, good health, living life. Going out and doing something rather than thinking about it for hours. But even staying in became more interesting with Zach. While visiting our parents we would play badminton for hours, shouting at each other the whole time, in obnoxious voices, pretending to be top competitors in “the Golden Birdie Tournament”. He always beat me—now I can admit it.

Being around Zach had a similar impact on me as reading Hemingway; under his influence the physical world seemed full of richness. I remember fondly the few days I spent with Zach and Kirstin in Maine the past two summers. I have a suspicion Zach didn’t even like fishing, but this didn’t stop us from spending 8 hours walking around getting sunburnt and dehydrated, catching just two or three pickerel, but enjoying ourselves nonetheless (though this reminds me that he never repaid me for that $10 frog lure he cast into a tree!). Being around Zach always meant eating well, also. Whether it’s a cup of coffee, a pizza, or a cheesecake, eating well was something to be practiced and improved upon.

More than anything, I remember goofing around with Zach, to the point where we would exasperate everyone within 50 feet of us. We went to play tennis on the courts at Bowdoin College and couldn’t stop making exaggerated screeches and grunts when we served (frequently failing to make contact with the tennis ball entirely).I apologize to real tennis players. At family dinners we would both put on our persona of right-wing radio talk show host, always trying to one up each other, screeching in nasally voices about the importance of testing welfare recipients to ensure they have not been taking bubble baths, “I work hard for my money! Do I take bubble baths? No! But the liberals want these dirty dogs to just lounge about all day in bubble baths! This is an atrocity! We need to test them for bubble residue…”

As an older brother I might have been condescending at times—maybe this is why I was surprised at other sides of Zach that appeared. He would share his photos occasionally, and I was struck by how good they had gotten. He had patience, perseverance, perfectionism, and a great eye; he revealed perspectives of common scenes that made them uncommon and new. He was devoted and a hard worker. But I will probably start getting maudlin now, so I will stop. Otherwise Zach will surely mock me when we meet again.

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