Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2007. As you can see Mattie was on our deck playing inside his sandbox. However, with Mattie playing was always creative. He got out a fishing pole and was pretending that all his sand toys were fish. He was trying to catch each toy and actually had some success in the process. With Mattie you always had to think outside the box, the conventional way of doing things would never do! He brought a certain life and energy into everything he did. We greatly miss the spark he added to our lives.
Quote of the day: Mourning is love with no place to go. ~ unknown author
For the past several mornings, Patches, our cat, has decided to wake me up at 4am. Considering I am not feeling well and need rest, I find her awakenings highly disruptive and very unsettling. She is truly going to appreciate Peter's return on Saturday. He has a way of controlling her behavior, I wish he would tell me his secret!
Peter is holding his own in Kenya, but being on very different time zones for 2 weeks has been quite challenging. When I get up in the morning, he has already lived that day and is headed to bed. As I was going to bed last night, my lifetime friend, Karen, emailed me and told me to turn on the TV because she wanted me to know that bin Laden was dead. I almost couldn't process what she was saying, until I flipped on the news and saw the reports for myself. She and I emailed back and forth about the news for a bit, and we even awaited President Obama's address to the world. Karen and I live in two of the cities impacted greatly by September 11, 2001. Certainly this wasn't only a New York and Washington, DC tragedy, it was a loss of great proportion for our entire Country. We lost over 3000 people and families were permanently affected by this horror. But in addition to this, many of our freedoms were also lost on that day. If you doubt that, then you just have to reflect on the way air travel has changed since 9/11. Regardless of one's political viewpoints and stance, the news about bin Laden was a unifying factor, citizens were outside the White House last night chanting USA... USA.... USA, and the Country Music station I listen to, played patriotic music and songs ALL day today. The funny thing though is as I went to bed last night, Peter was waking up, and I shared the news about bin Laden with him. The power of the Internet!
Before running chores today, I met up with Ann, Mary (her mom), and Shayla (Mary's caregiver). Mary was having a morning out and getting her hair done. For the past several hair outings Mary has had, I have been with her, so some traditions I try to uphold. While she was getting her hair done, we all talked together, something that I know Mary loves. In the midst of talking, I looked at Mary, and she gave me a huge smile. With Mary's neurological disease, smiling is rather challenging. So when I see a smile, it always gets me to stop and pause.
This afternoon I was on a mission to visit the Lego store at the Tyson's Corner Mall. This was by far Mattie's FAVORITE store to visit. I was scheduled to meet Liz, the assistant store manager. Liz has been EXTREMELY instrumental in helping us with this year's Foundation Walk. She has helped to secure volunteers to run individual build tables at the walk, she found a Lego artist to design a 20,000 piece Lego brick Mosaic of our Foundation's Logo, and she also secured members for the train users group to set up Lego active train displays at the Walk. Liz met Mattie in August of 2009 (a month before he died). Linda, Mattie's childlife specialist, arranged for a private event for Mattie at the Lego store, and Liz helped to coordinate this evening. In essence this was the last wonderful thing Mattie did before he died, and that evening was very bittersweet. In addition, to Liz, there were two other wonderful Lego representatives there that night, Brandon and Jared. Both of these men are volunteering at this year's Foundation Walk. I actually find these Lego folks to be absolutely incredible, generous, and compassionate people! Around 15 Lego volunteers will be participating in our Walk and several of them donated to the Foundation many Lego systems to be included in our Walk raffle. I am truly in awe of their kindness, and I even met another store employee today, Bernadette, who is volunteering at the Walk. She knew ALL about Mattie. It is a special feeling when people who NEVER met Mattie know about him and talk about him. In a way, Mattie has a legacy in that Lego store!
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