Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2003. This has to be one of my favorite photos we captured of Mattie. You can see Mattie was staring at something or someone! The person in question would be me. Mattie always seemed to find me no matter where I was in our home. It was like he was part homing pigeon! Peter joked with me often about photographs of Mattie. According to Peter, Mattie had a different look and smile on his face if I was in Mattie's eye shot. I am not sure that is exactly true, but I do know hearing this always made me smile.
Quote of the day: In the end there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to. ~ Robert Brault
When I was in Los Angeles recently, I received an email that a reminder date was placed on my Blackberry calendar. Naturally not having sent myself the email, I clicked on it to read what the issue was. Low and behold, what did the message say?????????????? Upgrade to an i-phone and then have lunch! No this wasn't some sort of come on from the Apple store. The message was sent by Peter. It was a subtle reminder that I need to get with the 21st century. Needless to say while in California, Peter would do a countdown for me of days until getting an i-phone.
I am sure to the average person my hesitation about getting an i-phone seems ridiculous. After all, I am sure those of you with one already know that you can do SO much more than I can with a Blackberry. But the Blackberry for me has symbolized more than just a technological gadget. It was my life line when Mattie was battling cancer and then became my virtual support group the first year after Mattie's death. My Blackberry has been with me through all the highs and lows of Mattie's battle and honestly it was in the hospital that I learned to carry the phone with me EVERYWHERE! It even was right next to me while sleeping. Mattie's journey with cancer was surreal and those around me shared in this surreal experience. Some people in our care team would email me at ALL hours of the day and night. In many ways when dealing with life and death circumstances, normality disappears and I know I wasn't oriented to time, days, and most happenings around me back then. I became totally engrossed in beeps, buzzes, the rhythm of an intensive care unit, and of course every sound, moan, and action of Mattie's. When Mattie was alive people wanted to connect with me, they wanted updates on how he was doing, and basically some lived the frenetic pace with me.
This summer, I confided in one of our crucial members of team Mattie that it was a very hard adjustment after Mattie died to go from being on the forefront of everyone's mind (with many many text messages and emails), to slowly becoming a faded memory. The fading definitely happened during our second year of grieving. It wasn't subtle either, it was a profound disconnect. Loss is a funny thing, others may witness it and may even experience it through you, but only you have the actual wounds and scars. As such, time plays different roles for the observer versus the one who was actually in the train wreck (ie, losing a child to cancer). I suppose as I transition to an i-phone it symbolizes many things to me. It isn't just simply migrating from one phone to another! Instead, it signifies the actual big change in our lives, in which I no longer live in a hospital and in crisis, caring for a seven year old boy. It also is a tangible reminder that our care team is not the same as it once was and the nature of how I use a phone now is strikingly different.
The day Mattie was diagnosed with cancer, July 23, 2008, was the day that our world became one domino effect of loss. One loss leads to another and another. Some may think that our loss began on the day Mattie died, because that isn't true. It began on diagnosis day when we had to grieve the loss of a healthy child, then the loss of a child with functioning limbs, the loss of not living a normal life, the loss of freedom that comes from living in a hospital, the loss of friends, the loss of an identity, and the list of losses just continues to grow. Saying goodbye to my Blackberry is in essence another loss for me, because this phone has served as a reminder of our hospital battle and a time in which we were a family of three not two.
No comments:
Post a Comment