Tonight's picture was taken in September of 2008. Mattie was home between treatments and his close buddy Campbell came over to visit him. Campbell and Mattie were inseparable during kindergarten. They gravitated to each other, understood each other, and for five year olds... they supported and stood up for one another. Mattie and Campbell did not need TV or video games to keep themselves busy. They instead used their creativity and imaginations and this could keep them occupied for hours. They built off of each other's stories and they were actually fun to watch and listen to as they brainstormed and played. As you can see in this photo, two stuffed animals were involved in their train play scheme and there was even a space shuttle standing upright ready for take off on Mattie's rug. This photo captures the beauty of two friends playing and connecting, regardless of cancer.
Quote of the day: Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. ~
Today started out like any other day. Returning emails and doing other Foundation tasks. However, today was a bit of a revelation to me. An unexpected revelation, which I suppose is the best kind. Not one that is solicited or contrived but one which occurred by the simple sharing of minds and hearts between two friends.
I left our home today to meet up with my friend Christine. Christine's son is Campbell (who is in the photo above). Christine and I met each other when our children were in kindergarten together. After school, Mattie and Campbell would meet on the playground or had play dates with each other. These meetings gave Christine and I plenty of time to get to know each other and chat. Christine and her family supported us through Mattie's cancer and Christine has served as our Foundation Walk registration chair for four years now. Needless to say a devoted and committed friend.
However, even with our closest friends it is sometimes hard to be honest about our feelings regarding Mattie's death. I have learned over time there are safer people to share emotions with than others. Friends who do want to listen, who do want to hear about my true feelings and also will accept what I am saying without taking it the wrong way or out of context are valued and are gifts to people like myself who are grieving.
Christine and I meet periodically, and no meeting ever goes by without talking about Mattie. Over lunch today, Christine asked me what we were doing this weekend. In other words how are we planning to acknowledge Mattie's fourth anniversary of his death? Since Christine asked me and I trust Christine, I then elaborated on my feelings. I have never shared the true extent of this information with anyone other than Peter, and after sharing it with Christine today, I felt like I was totally understood and therefore it gave me the courage to write about it here.
How would we ideally want to spend the anniversaries of Mattie's death and his birthdays? The answer is Peter and I most likely would want or need different things on these dates. Which is okay, we are both okay with that, and we have learned to appreciate our different needs with grief. But if you asked me what I would want, I would most likely want to have yearly gatherings of friends. People who knew Mattie and could share memories and feelings about him with us. However, I do NOT plan such gatherings. Do you want to know why?! Well as Mother Teresa so brilliantly stated, being transparent makes you vulnerable, but as I learned today it is through being vulnerable with Christine that I learned so much more.
On September 8th of 2010, this was Mattie's first anniversary of his death. For this one year mark, Peter and I hosted a gathering at Mattie's school, by the tree his class planted in his honor. This is a beautiful red oak tree that is growing leaps and bounds. It is strong, young, and bold. Not unlike our Mattie. At the tree gathering in 2010, I baked about four dozen cupcakes and frosted them with different colors. The cupcakes had great significance since Mattie went through a cupcake phase in the hospital. I used cupcakes as incentives for Mattie to do physical therapy. At one point this was the only food Mattie was eating! At the gathering, my dear friend Junko and her mom hand crafted origami praying cranes and attached Christmas hooks to each crane. Each of the children who came to the event got to hang a crane ornament on Mattie's tree. It was a beautiful, symbolic, and touching way to celebrate Mattie's life. Naturally people chatted with each other, had cupcakes, and overall it was a very meaningful event. Yet it is how the event ended that has always stuck with me. The ending of that day hurt me for years and yet I never verbalized it really until today. When Christine heard my interpretation of what happened she felt horrible and wished she knew how I felt.
As our tree gathering event was ending in 2010, people came up to me to say good-bye and told me they had to RUN. They were running to the NEXT after school activity. Either a team sport, or whatever it may be. Seeing moms leaving with their kids in tow to the next activity of the day was devastating for me. In fact it negated anything else that happened that day, and this feeling as remained with me ever since. I can see people leaving even in my mind's eye today, just like a flashback to a scene in a movie. As people were leaving, Peter and I were left to clean up, carry things to the car, and go home. Except we weren't leaving to the NEXT activity or task of the day. We had nothing! We left to go home to an empty home, without Mattie, knowing that everyone around us had busy lives and that the tree gathering was just another task on a to do list. These are feelings I have been harboring for years.
Christine asked me today, how the event could have been different, and I told her the biggest and most stark contrast between when Mattie was alive and after he died was that when Mattie was alive, people worked with us as a team. During that first anniversary there was no team. It was a painful reality and also another loss. Now after hearing all of this Christine could have said to me, that I was wrong, that I misinterpreted things, or that from her perspective as a mom with healthy children that I don't understand the complexities of all a mom has to balance in a given day. However, Christine said NONE of these things! Instead, she took what I was saying seriously and said she wished she thought about this on the day of the event and she wished she knew how I felt sooner.
Christine was saying that some times people make assumptions of wanting to give us our space and she suggested that maybe people left that day because they thought Peter and I wanted time alone by the tree. That may have been true for a small percentage of attendees but I told Christine, when people are in doubt, they only need to ask. But I know that asking requires someone to be vulnerable. Not an easy thing to do. So the first revelation today was that I could honestly explore how I felt about Mattie's first anniversary. It was a hard anniversary of missing Mattie and then feeling an even greater loss by the reaction of those around me. There is great value and appreciation in feeling understood and to also be able to be honest about this with a friend.
However, the second revelation today was Christine's honesty about how Mattie's death has impacted her and her family. As I told her today, while crying, is that at times I assume I am the only one Mattie's death impacts and who continues to be devastated by this. As it seems from my perception like everyone around us has moved on. Christine enlightened me what it is like to watch a friend go through childhood cancer and then a child's death, and how this continues to play out in her life. As I told her, her honesty was probably the best gift she could have given me as Mattie's fourth anniversary fast approaches. Christine is the first person to really verbalize this to me, and it is through what she said today that I have a better perspective of what it is like to be a friend watching a friend go through this and the overall impact on others. I have a feeling that others do not want to tell me about their grief because they think it will compound mine. This may have been true in the beginning, but now as time passes, it helps tremendously to hear how others are dealing with the loss of Mattie. Sometimes just like people make assumptions about those who are grieving, we grievers make incorrect assumptions about those around us. How are these assumptions confronted? Only through honest and open dialogue. Or as Mother Teresa so aptly stated by being vulnerable.
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