Mattie's Blog and his Fight Against Osteosarcoma

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to me that you take the time to write and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful and help support me through very challenging times. I am forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically have stopped writing on September 9, 2010. However, like my journey with grief there is so much that still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with me, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.

As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki

August 15, 2011

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2003. What I love about this picture was it captured Mattie's look of curiosity and intrigue. Mattie was fascinated by many things and always wanted to explore and understand how things around him worked.

Quote of the day: Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved. ~ Iris Murdoch

Today was an early morning for us since the Sapphire Princess docked in Seattle at 7am. By 8:20am, after having our last meal in the dining room, we headed off the ship. It is hard to imagine that while I am writing this, someone else is in our cabin and starting their voyage to Alaska. This illustrates to me how fragile time is and how quickly it goes by.

We spent several hours at the airport with my parents before boarding our flight back to Washington, DC. Fortunately it was a pretty smooth flight. However, since I have been on the ship for seven days, I still feel like I am floating on water and definitely do not have my equilibrium. It will take my body a few days to adjust to being on solid ground. So in the meantime I took dramamine before flying because I can easily get motion sick if I do not taper down my dramamine consumption. I learned that lesson the hard way before. However, dramamine makes me very sleepy, and I could bearly keep my head up on the plane. Which for someone who hates flying, this is a VERY good thing.

We hit a lot of weather today while flying and in the clouds I could see lightning! Perfect for a person who is an anxious flyer. But our pilot, who was a woman, was absolutely great, and literally there was very little turbulence considering all she was manuvering through.

While in the air, Peter captured some wonderful pictures, which I will share below with you. Tonight's blog is going to be short, because we got home at 10:30pm, we unpacked, did laundry, went grocery shopping, and we are wiped out. Alaska is FOUR hours behind Washington, DC, and I already feel confused time wise.