Monday, September 21, 2009

This picture was taken of Mattie when he was four years old. It was a hot summer day, and he insisted he wanted to take a bath in the kitchen sink. I tried to reason with him, but in true Mattie fashion, I knew I wasn’t going to win this battle. He thoroughly enjoyed being in the kitchen sink. After that bath though, neither of us looked at the kitchen sink the same way.


Today was another glorious weather day in Washington, DC, full of sunshine. As I opened up our front door, there was enough of a breeze to cause the wind chimes that Mattie gave me for my birthday to be blowing. In fact, since he gave them to me back in July, I had yet to hear them make a sound. But today, they were singing away. At first I did not recognize what was making that sound, and then I had Peter go out on our deck and investigate. Sure enough the sound was coming from Mattie’s chimes. This gave me great pause, because I took this as a sign that Mattie was trying to communicate with me. He loved those chimes, and would always check in with me to see if I thought they were special too. As I always told him, because they came from him, they will always be special to me. The sound they made today was soft, delicate, and yet so melodic. I will always remember the line that Jimmy Stewart delivered in the movie, A Wonderful Life. In essence Jimmy Stewart’s character, Mr. George Bailey said, “every time you hear a bell ring, an angel gets his wings.” Well today, in my mind, my angel got his wings. I have no idea if Mattie created them himself or fought over the exact size he wanted, but nonetheless, I needed to hear those bells today.

I had a very difficult night that somehow ran into the morning. Last night I started to look at pictures of Mattie, and that triggered a flood to tears. In fact, Mattie’s preschool director, Kim, has a daughter who sent me a beautiful song that reminded her of Mattie. As I played it last night, I concurred whole-heartedly with Caitlin. Between the song and the pictures, I ended up in tears, and I picked up right where I left off last night this morning.

Peter was on a wild goose chase today with Montgomery County, MD. Back in March we received an erroneous parking ticket. Mind you, I never parked my car in a public lot in Montgomery County because I was in the Lombardi Clinic with Mattie getting an infusion of MTP on the day in question. Nonetheless, it was the principle of the matter, we paid the ticket and late fee (since we never knew about the ticket until we received the late fee notice of an upaid parking ticket, a ticket we never received) back in April and of course requested a court date to contest the ticket. So after some delay we contested the ticket today, and of course won. Thankfully the Lombardi Clinic wrote a letter on our behalf verifying that I was in the clinic on that day. But what a reality check only 13 days after Mattie’s death.

In fact, the judge and others in the courtroom today were listening to Peter's not guilty plea and the case he was making, and after the judge dismissed the case, he asked Peter how Mattie was doing (mind you the 200 plus people in the traffic courtroom could hear all of this). When he said that Mattie had died 13 days ago, Peter said every one in the courtroom got very upset. This does not surprise me, as seven year olds are NOT supposed to die.

Peter and I took another walk outside today and had lunch together by the water. We are enjoying just sitting still, watching the ripples in the water, and sometimes talking, but other times just being in peace and reflection and in silence. We stare at the water, at Roosevelt Island, and anything and everything that happens reminds us of Mattie and worse, reminds us of both memories gone by as well as the things both present and future that we have lost.

This afternoon, I had the opportunity to visit my dear friend Junko who was in the hospital. Junko and her husband, Tad, have been so incredibly supportive of me this year. To refresh your memory, Junko is the SSSAS mom and friend who would come to the hospital and give me a back massage during her visits. When a dear person like this isn’t feeling well, I do stop whatever I am doing in order to see how she is doing. I find through all this tragedy that I have found the true beauty of friendship. It just saddens me what I had to experience and live through in order to clearly see the love of people around me.

We would like to thank the McCleary family for a wonderful home cooked dinner. Also thank you for the lovely card, we truly appreciate your support. We want to thank you all for the beautiful e-mails and cards, and know that we truly value your care and concern for us during indescribable and horrific time. I still can’t believe that two weeks ago tonight Mattie was in the process of dying. Just how can this be? It is still so hard to accept.