Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Tonight's picture was taken at another Fall Festival in October of 2006. If you have been tuning into the blog for the past couple of weeks, you maybe seeing a trend. What I am trying to illustrate is we covered a lot of territory during our October weekends together. Peter and I both consciously decided that over programming Mattie with activities would not be a good idea at any point in his development. Of course that decision was a curse and a blessing. It was a curse because that meant that we had to direct and guide the activities and be fully on all the time. The blessing however, is that it gave us the time to connect and bond as a family. Now that Mattie is gone from our lives, I never look back with regret. I would have hated to reflect that I had him jumping from one activity to the next, and thereby having only memories of interrupted and rushed moments together. Peter and I made this challenging decision, and it certainly wasn't easy especially when we live in the Washington, DC area, where I see children on complete overload. But one thing is quite certain about myself, once I have a conviction, I am not easily swayed or intimidated by the opinions of those around me. In the end, this was the right decision for us as a family.  I can say this with great clarity now that cancer has ravaged our family, that as a parent you will not be looking back at the achievements and successes your child had in school or during any particular activity. You will be evaluating the emotional ties, connections, and the bond that was created and will hopefully last a lifetime. Such bonds do not just happen, and healthy emotional connections take time, patience, and personal investments.


Quote of the day: Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean. ~ David Searls

I began my day with my walking routine. I find I always begin walking very tense, with a headache, and pondering Foundation items and of course the planning of the next Walk. However, as I continue walking, I always feel the tension dissolving, as if with each step, the stress and at times emotional pain are somehow escaping from my body. After my walk however, I went through my emails, and within seconds my stress level returned to its heightened state.

I learned today that one of the counseling professors, Chris Erickson, at The George Washington University died on October 20. I never experienced Chris as a professor, but we worked together in other capacities. Chris' battle with cancer began before Mattie's. She battled it for quite a number of years, but she did tell me one day that her condition was terminal because there really wasn't a treatment out there to help her. Unfortunately she was right. Chris and I did not always see eye to eye on things professionally. However, once Mattie developed cancer, she and I were most definitely on the same page. It is funny how cancer can change your life and in a way I hate to say this, cancer brings about enlightenment. I do not limit this enlightenment to just cancer, it could be any life threatening or traumatic experience that produces internal changes.

I can vividly recall the last conversation Chris and I had together. She told me that cancer taught her that she had to listen to her body, when she was tired, she had to rest. If she wanted to go on vacation and see different places and meet different people, then she should do that. That putting off things until tomorrow is ridiculous. Because tomorrow may never come, and then what? She also said that the competition and intense work schedule we follow in our area in the end serves no purpose. Chris and I actually had a very existential conversation that day, a conversation I very much appreciated. We had this chat prior to Mattie developing cancer. She was telling me that she admired my decision to be a full time mom and a part time professional, and told me that in the end that will be more important than what job I had, what papers I published, and the list goes on. As I replay this conversation in my head today, it is almost eerie. Eerie because Chris was 100% correct. Cancer strips away the nonsense in life. It is raw, it is real life and death situations, and it instantly removes the murky decisions we have to make. That is because the only decision to focus upon is how am I going to live and fight this disease TODAY. There is no tomorrow to think about, there is only today. It is a frightening and yet freeing existence.

Needless to say, I am deeply saddened that Chris, who was only 47 years old, has been struck down by cancer. This is yet another example of cancer running rampant and there was NOTHING the medical community could do to stop it.

In the midst of all of this swirling around in my head, I got an email from my friend Tina. Tina has a way of sending me messages on days when I seem to need them. She had no idea about Chris and we did not discuss this today, which was good. I needed a distraction and to chat with a friend. Because Tina and I do not know each other as mothers, this makes connecting with Tina easier for me. Tina and I became friends once Mattie died. Therefore our children do not bond us together, we are connected because we have many things in common. Each time we meet the list only gets longer as we found out today.