Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. I typically do not post photos of Mattie that are not happy looking, yet when I came across this one tonight, I decided to use it. The basket you see here was given to me by my students at the George Washington University. They wanted Mattie to be able to celebrate Halloween and they wanted Mattie to know they were thinking of him. Mattie loved the basket and actually removed all the balloons and landed up sitting inside of the basket. Yet as you can see from this photo, Mattie had some very sad, isolating, lonely, painful, and debilitating times in the Hospital. His treatment was wearing and sometimes no matter what diversions we placed in front of Mattie, none of them could erase or wipe away the pain he was in. This is the reality of cancer, certainly we hear a ton about chemotherapy, radiation, and surgeries. But the treatment has real psychological consequences and these consequences do not go away as soon as the chemotherapy is infused and done. The drugs maybe short term, but the impact of the drugs are long-term.
Quote of the day: There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ~ Nelson Mandela
Loss is a funny word and an even more perplexing feeling.
Today I experienced or observed so many different losses. When you think about
your day to day life, how many losses are you processing at one time? When I
refer to loss, I don't necessarily mean the death of someone. It could be the
loss of a friendship, the loss of a perceived connection you had with someone,
the loss of a job or contract, the loss of someone's respect, or the loss of what once was. The listing of
losses are endless. When you tally the number of losses in any given day, it
really does add up. One loss of some kind is hard to manage, but what happens
when you get hit with multiple losses at one time?
I had the opportunity to spend time with my friend Mary
today. I have multiple friends with the name Mary. But the Mary I am referring
to is the one who lives in an assisted living facility. I have known Mary for
almost five years now. Though that is a relatively short period of time, it has
been very concentrated time together. We have bonded over the loss of our sons
to cancer and I tried to be of support to her during the time her husband died. Over the course of the five years, I have watched Mary rapidly decline due to a neurological disease. The decline involves her inability to walk, move, feed herself, and talk. Somehow losing the ability to talk and connect with others seems like the greatest curse possible. We take for granted our VOICE, until we do not have one. Needless to say, seeing my friend trapped within her own body is hard to understand, accept, and at times see. But there are many things about life that aren't pretty. There are countless older adults around this Country who aren't visited regularly. They are treated like forgotten people, and my hunch maybe because it is HARD to see and witness such decline! Mary is fortune that she has a family who looks after her daily, but most aren't so lucky. I am not Mary's family and one could say, is it worth visiting Mary? The answer in my mind is yes. Maybe because I am good at reflecting on the past, the moments we shared together, and how we helped each other in different ways in the Fall of 2009, when I lost Mattie and Mary lost her husband. Those memories and moments were real and though she can't talk about them, they are part of our connection and history.
After seeing Mary, I visited Georgetown University Hospital where I had a meeting about an event the Foundation is hosting next week. While at the Hospital, I had the opportunity to connect with Linda (Mattie's Child Life Specialist) and Tricia (one of Mattie's favorite nurses). It is funny the entire world can change, evolve, and perhaps forget, and yet when I am with Linda and Tricia, I can go right back to 2008. The time we shared caring for Mattie will remain with Peter and me always, they became like family to us.
As Mandela's quote points, when we revisit a place we once knew, the place may remain the same, but somehow we see the changes within ourselves. After the Hospital meeting, I landed up going to a place on campus to get tea. I sat there for a while. This is a place Peter and I visited often for food while Mattie was in treatment and it was a place we waited many times during Mattie's sedated scans or even surgeries. Needless to say it is a place that holds many emotions for me. While sitting in this café this afternoon, I realized just how profoundly my life has changed and how only a few years ago I was sitting in the same place thinking that there was hope that that we could battle Mattie's cancer. Amazing now four years later, the people in the café are there doing the same things..... studying medicine, talking about cases, and getting coffee between rounds, but I AM NOT THE SAME. I am not sitting there as a patient's mom, I am sitting there as a grieving mom, and for me SO MUCH HAS BEEN ALTERED.
No comments:
Post a Comment