Monday, August 1, 2011

Monday, August 1, 2011

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2007. Mattie was right in the middle of our living room creating with Legos. A common occurrence. He designed his version of a cruise ship, including two tall smoke stacks. I miss seeing his creativity and his beautiful smile.


Quote of the day: Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. ~ William Shakespeare

Today was a busy day filled with chores and other activities to get ready to go on vacation. Peter and I are leaving for Seattle on Friday to meet up with my parents and then we are all going on a week long cruise of Alaska. Trying to think of packing for cooler weather is a great challenge for me, especially since it has been in the 100's in Washington, DC with high humidity. I began my day with processing Foundation paperwork and contributions and then sat down for several hours to set up the blog for our 10 day vacation. Setting up the blog means uploading pictures of Mattie each day and selecting a quote of the day. By having this pre-loaded, it makes writing the blog on vacation a bit easier. Going out of town also means making sure Patches is well taken care of and of course that my garden doesn't die. We lost 50% of our flowers during our trip to the beach in June, so this time around, my hope is the sprinkler system will work! Some how it seems just devastating to come home to dead plants. I would say that June and July have been very difficult months for us this summer for various reasons. Most of the reasons I do not feel like elaborating on right now. So in a way, getting away and out of Washington, DC and our routine will be very good and needed for us. Not that traveling enables us to forget Mattie and our grief, because it doesn't. This loss is always present and it goes with us everywhere like a fifth appendage. Nonetheless, living in a home filled with memories and working on ways to help other families with cancer makes the loss real for us each and every day.