Zach Cloud and Chloe Cloud

Cloud family from left: Zach, Tim, Kaylee,
Chloe, Karen and Brandon

 Zach Cloud is the loveliest boy.

He'll cringe when he reads this and wish I'd used any other adjective. Too bad. Let him start up his own blog. To me he's lovely. Everybody else around here thinks so, too.

Last fall when he was crowned Homecoming King by the student body, Zach stepped shyly forward to tumultuous applause from Grand Island Central Catholic kids and fans and beamed his sweet smile. Everybody - teachers and students - adores him and loves his determined and competitive spirit. The kid runs cross country and track like a demon, but in class he's quiet and thoughtful and works hard for straight A's. And he's funny. Lord, the kid is funny.

His sister Chloe - a tall, slender, beautiful junior - smiles with wide open warmth just like her big brother. People love her, too. Already a college recruited volleyball player, Chloe loses herself completely on the volleyball and basketball courts. She gets her love of the game from her mom Karen, also a high school and college athlete.

"One of our favorite things to do," Chloe grins, "was to play pepper with a beach ball and bump, set and hit right in the living room." Her little brother and sister, Brandon and Kaylee, played, too. She loved the long talks she and her mom shared on the endless drives to and from volleyball and basketball practices. "That time belonged to us," Chloe says.

The happy Cloud family was torn apart six months ago on a warm July morning. Chloe rushed out the door for volleyball camp.

"Bye, Mom!" she called behind her shoulder grabbing her car keys. "Love you!"

They were the last words she ever spoke to her mother.

Shortly after Chloe left, her mother Karen drove herself to the doctor's office. A physical therapy assistant, Karen possessed enough medical knowledge to understand she needed to see a physician. Something, she knew, wasn't right. Without worrying her husband Tim or her children, she arrived alone at the clinic, parked and made her way through the facility. Before she could reach her doctor's office, however, she collapsed. Although help came immediately, Karen was unresponsive and transported to St. Francis Hospital. She could not be revived.

Chloe was confused later at the gym when she was told gently but firmly by Coach Sharon Zavala and Athletic Director Dick Ross to go home. She was only slightly worried when her mother didn't answer her text. 

Zach, in the meantime, had just arrived home after morning weights. Lounging with younger siblings Brandon and Kaylee, he received a text from a friend.

"Sorry about your mom, Zach," the text said. 

Bewildered, Zach texted back. "What do you mean?"

After a long pause, he received a reply. "She died."

In the midst of their panic, the kids, with their grandparents, met their father at the hospital. Tim Cloud, waiting for them at St. Francis, gathered his devastated children to him. "We need to say goodbye to your mom," he sobbed.

Eleven-year-old Brandon pleaded with his father. "I don't want to see her!" he cried.

But Kaylee, 8, clutching her father's arm, was followed by her sister and brother. At Chloe's side was good friend Jenna Heidelk.

"I'll go in with you!" Jenna assured Chloe and grabbed her friend's hand in her own. The little group shuffled into the room. Chloe remembers begging her mother to wake up. It was a moment too terrible to absorb.

Chloe at the state
volleyball finals

Karen Cloud's death was heartbreaking for the community. A good friend to her church and school communities, Karen was involved in every aspect of her family's life. Hardly an evening passed that didn't find Tim and Karen at Zach's running events, Chloe's athletic competitions, and Brandon and Kaylee's various activities at Newell Elementary. She was the supreme organizer fixing lunches, keeping track of the school calendar, and dropping kids off everywhere. At home she cooked, cleaned, folded laundry and even found time to make Christmas candy every year.

But she was never as happy as when she watched her children compete in sports. Her pride over Zach's athletic accomplishments was all over her facebook page. When Chloe's volleyball team won the state championship during Chloe's sophomore year, Karen was beside herself. 

Now without her constant presence at their school activities, the Cloud kids feel completely bereft. Yet somehow, after six months of turbulent and heart-wrenching adjusting, the Cloud family is figuring out their lives without Karen.

Tim, who works at the Hy-Vee meat department, tries desperately to spend time with his kids. 

"He just wants us to be happy," Zach says.

"And he wants us to have stuff," Chloe agrees. "Zach and I try to look after Brandon and Kaylee so Dad can get a little rest sometimes. He worries about us so much."

Chloe has taken on the lion's share of the household duties. "I get the kids up and take them to school. I try to get the laundry and the vacuuming done on weekends and do the dishes. The laundry never ends," she rolls her eyes.

Surprisingly, 11-year-old Brandon cooks for the family. "He makes pretty good grilled cheese sandwiches and spaghetti," Zach admits. One time he even made cookies and cream ice cream crushing Oreos all over the kitchen counter.

"It was a mess," Chloe laughs.

Salvation for Zach and Chloe has come through sports.

"Cross country this year," Zach sighs, "was a great way to escape the darkness. It helped to be around my friends." In his first year of cross country, Zach garnered a medal at the state cross country meet. This winter he's swimming, primarily to keep in shape for his favorite sport just around the corner - track.

Zach with his dad after winning
a state x-country medal

Chloe, too, gives herself up to volleyball and basketball. "Every time I hit a volleyball, I take out all my frustrations on that ball."

They deal every day with the grief. Sometimes it comes in great sudden waves. In my junior English class, we read a novel about two ancient sisters who lose their mother.

"I don't suppose it matters how old you are," I say to the class. "Losing your mom is always tough."

It's the wrong thing to say. I have forgotten Chloe who sits in the front row and lowers her head to sniff and dissolve into tears. I lead her out to the hall to comfort her, but her good friend Jenna Heidelk follows me. "Shall I come, Mrs. Howard?" she says with eyes full of concern.

Bless Jenna who walks and speaks softly to her friend Chloe until she composes herself.

Chloe says the Clouds are lucky to have many friends. Her other good friend, Rylie Rice, sticks close, too. The Rice family invited all the Clouds for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even these first holidays without their mother were bearable because of good friends like the Rices.

Dax Gellatly, Brandon's sixth grade friend from GICC, invites Brandon over regularly.

"Brandon loves the Gellatly family," Chloe says. They're all grateful for the way their good family friends care for her little brother during an especially hard time.

All the Clouds feel especially indebted to Sara Wilson, a GICC parent and friend, who arranged a Go Fund Me page the day that Karen passed away. The donations amounted to nearly 30,000 dollars and helped with a variety of expenses, including Karen's funeral. In addition, Sara brought a symbolic chair with a rose for Chloe's mother to each of Chloe's athletic events. A gifted photographer, Sara also took Zach's senior pictures.

"I don't know what we would have done without Sara," Chloe shakes her head, "or all of our friends and teachers and coaches. Everybody's been so good to us."

"Hopefully," Zach says, "we can give back to them someday."

It's too easy to say life goes on. Life will never be the same for the Clouds. Chloe still agonizes over a terrible dream she had shortly before her mother's death.

"I actually dreamed she did die," Chloe's eyes fill. "On the day that Mom really did die, I was supposed to have a dentist appointment, but I asked her to cancel it so that I could go to volleyball camp. Maybe if I hadn't canceled it, she might still be alive," she sobs.

The utter helplessness to save her mother still tears Chloe apart.

Chloe and her aunts make 
Christmas candy.

But those moments are more and more infrequent. Chloe and her siblings cherish their grandmother and aunts, all of whom make them feel close to their mother. "My grandmother is so much like my mom," Chloe says.

This last Christmas, just as the Cloud kids think their mother's yearly tradition of making Christmas candy will disappear forever, their mother's sisters arrive with all the ingredients for a whole day of baking. 

And their grandmother helps them with their faith. "She sees cardinals all the time," Chloe says. "That's a sign from my mom, she says."

Chloe herself remembers seeing hundreds of butterflies after her mother died and says she always feels in some secret way that her mother is with all of them.

At a cross country meet last fall, Zach thinks he sees his mother just to his right walking toward him. Bolting his head around, he sees nothing. But he, like Chloe, feels his mother's nearness. It bolsters his faith.

"Church was really important to her," Zach reflects. "Mom wanted us to have faith."

On the first day of school, Chloe confides that she visited the school chapel to say a Rosary for her mom. "I felt God was listening, and it helped me to start the new school year without her."

When she sees her mom again, Chloe says, "I will never, ever leave her side. Ever."

Zach, who is a little uncomfortable with such intensity, says shyly, "I'll just try to, you know, fill her in about stuff she's missed down here."

However, a day after we speak with each other, Zach seeks me out. There's one more thing about his mother he'd like to share, he says.

"I realized a few months after she died," he says, "that Mom and I were the only people in our whole family with light brown, hazel eyes." 

The shyness comes over him again. "When I look in the mirror every morning, I see her looking back at me. Then I don't feel so lonely for her."

See what I mean? He's just the loveliest boy.