Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 -- Mattie died 216 weeks ago today.

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. Mattie was in the child life playroom of the Hospital and participating in a Halloween activity. Several Georgetown students came by dressed up to play with the kids and to help them decorate pumpkins. As you can see one was dressed up as Ariel, the mermaid from the Disney movie. It is interesting to note that when Mattie was battling cancer, he related better to college aged students and adults. This wasn't necessarily true when he was healthy. But while battling cancer, it was like something snapped within him and he felt  more mature individuals understood his plight better than kids his own age.


Quote of the day: Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. ~ Ernest Hemingway

After zumba class I went to my friend Heidi's home. Heidi is one of our supporters who is collecting post-Halloween candy for our Foundation candy drive. Heidi advertised the drive on her community listserv and people are coming out of the woodwork to help. As you can see Heidi basically has a candy factory going on in her house. I am greatly appreciative of all those who collect candy for us and of course I feel indebted to people like Heidi who comb through the candy for me and sort it into ziplocs. This may seem like a fun chore, but it is just that, a chore! When you have bags and bags of candy, this creates hours of work and sorting. However, since the candy represents the Foundation, I feel it is important that we spot check the candy and also store it in ziplocs for the Hospital. Remember this is candy for a YEAR!!! So the candy needs to be sealed appropriately for Hospital storage. This year I consider myself lucky to have my friends Heidi and Leslie helping me sort. They are doing stellar jobs and I appreciate their attention to detail and care for the candy. They are getting their children involved in the sorting and in the process these children are learning the importance of community service and making time to bring support and care to others. Which is a beautiful life lesson.

Meanwhile back on my front, I collected candy today and as you can see my piles are growing. Thankfully I bought ziplocs today and will begin my own sorting this week. Thursday I am going to the Lab School in Washington, DC. They are donating candy to our drive and part of their service learning involved counting the candy and sorting it into bags for me. So this will be another wonderful gift to receive and apparently several children want to meet me before handing over the candy!

Today I also went to visit my friend Mary who lives in an assisted living facility. I haven't seen Mary since I went away to Los Angeles. Typically when I visit Mary now, she is mute. But today after lunch she actually spoke to me. I haven't had a conversation with Mary in ages! It was almost as if I saw a glimmer of Mary from the past shine through. I see though the key with Mary is TIME! She hears EVERYTHING you are saying and is processing it, but it takes her a while (and I mean A WHILE) to verbalize what is going on in her head. Mary wanted me to know that she realizes I care about her and how much she appreciated that. She also said, "happiness is just a word." She did not elaborate on that statement, but I suspect if I had to fill in the blanks what she is saying is happiness is overrated and a very over used word. To some extent, I think with the loss of both of our sons to cancer, happiness is not a word either one of us like to use in our daily language anymore. When we hear it, it catches our attention, and it almost sends off bells within our heads.