“How they reacted, that’s exactly who they are,” said Audrey George, the executive director.

On a visit last month to Horizons, Barry Sullivan met two kindergartners whom the fund sponsored. The two members were part of the group Horizons calls “Declan’s 40.” The boy scurried about the lunchroom at the adjacent school, near the rules that included “chew with your mouth closed” and “say ‘excuse me’ when you burp.” The girl showed off the decorations in her locker, the sweater in her backpack.

“I feel pretty good about it,” Barry Sullivan said later, inside the Horizons offices, near a poster of all the children in Declan’s 40, which organizers hope will become Declan’s 80, then Declan’s 120 and on and on. “And it’s O.K. to feel good about it.”

Wynkoop returned to Notre Dame in October for the second anniversary of Sullivan’s death. He felt as if he needed to. He went to the memorial on campus and later took a shot of alcohol in remembrance with friends across the country at the time of Sullivan’s death.

He thought about the family and how they visited South Bend last year to accept Sullivan’s diploma and had dinner with all of his friends the night before they graduated, about the horror they have had to endure. He thought about how much Sullivan would have loved this season, how “it would have aged him many years just like the rest of us.”

“It was a long road for Notre Dame to get to where they are,” Wynkoop said. “Dealing with Declan’s death was part of that. The way I choose to look at it is I honestly don’t think they’d be where they are right now without him.”

For Father Jenkins, Sullivan’s death, and his family’s response to it, proved no less than transformative. They “took loss and grief and transformed it into something else, something generous and worthwhile,” he said. “To have them at the national championship game, after the dark day of Sullivan’s death, to see their generosity and healing, it will touch so many people.”

Same, perhaps, as the words he left behind.

At the end of “Clouds,” the script flashes back to the scene of the fall, where, upon closer inspection, Guy manages to grasp the hand he leapt for and “watches his lifeless body fall to the concrete below.” Another hand “emerges” and pulls Guy up.

The script continues:

VOICE (heavenly)

“Welcome. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Guy emerges into the cloud. Fade to white.