Friday, January 31, 2014

Friday, January 31, 2014

Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2008. It was grandparents day at Mattie's school and as you can see this was a big deal at the school. The school hosted a brunch, held a concert, and the children get to walk their grandparents around to meet their teachers. Featured with Mattie was Debbie. As my faithful readers know, Debbie was Mattie's art teacher. She is the teacher who worked with Mattie to create the huge painting of "Mr. Sun." A very memorable and thoughtful gift Debbie gave us, because it hangs in our dining room and reminds us always of Mattie. But Mr. Sun also became the symbol for the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation. Mattie and Debbie got along like peaches and cream. They understood each other and I have no doubt with Mattie's creativity, he was in good company with Debbie. I will never forget Mattie's first report card, because on it, Debbie wrote that "Mattie is an old soul." To this day, Debbie has a memorial tree in her own garden for Mattie. 


Quote of the day: Music is what feelings sound like. ~ Author Unknown

Have you ever noticed that once you learn about something, you then begin to see it everywhere in your environment? Pick a topic, it really applies to just about anything. I will give you a non-cancer example. During my first visit to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (before Mattie was born), I noticed the abbreviation of OBX all over town. It was on bumper stickers, flags, and so forth. I quickly learned that OBX is the Outer Banks. When I got home from our vacation that year, I began to observe OBX stickers on cars around DC. Before my trip I wouldn't have paid a bit of attention to these letters, but having gone to the Outer Banks and learned what OBX stood for, I found that I was clued into it from that point on. 

In a way, Mattie's diagnosis and his death have both had a similar effect on me. I am now very tuned into illness and grief and loss issues. Over this past weekend, Peter was working downstairs and I was working upstairs. He was downstairs singing something. As an aside, Peter has a beautiful voice, and therefore his singing is a pleasure to listen too. Any case, while he was singing, I asked him if he remembered the Christopher Cross song entitled, Think of Laura. I had heard it while out and about one day, and it stuck with me all week. Not necessarily because of the lyrics at first. Something about the song caught my attention. So Peter went on line to listen to it. Peter immediately said to me, that I most likely related to it because it is about LOSS. I have to tell you I have heard this song for years, and only now put two and two together. Death of a child wasn't on my mind before 2009! 

So when Peter told me the song was about a death, I googled the title. Indeed he is right. The death of a young adult named, Laura. I had no idea that the song 
became popularized when the American television network ABC began playing "Think of Laura" in reference to characters on the soap opera General Hospital. One of the program's supercouples, Luke and Laura, who were quite popular at the time, and the song came to be associated with these TV characters. 

Cross allowed ABC to use his song in that context, however, he stated that he wrote "Think of Laura" not in reference to the television characters, but to mourn the death of Denison University college student Laura Carter who was killed when she was struck by a stray bullet fired over a block away, during an altercation between four men. Carter, was a lacrosse player from Wayne, Pennsylvania, and was sitting in the back seat of a car, being driven by her father, who with his wife, was visiting their daughter for the college's annual homecoming weekend. They planned to take her and two friends to dinner in Columbus, Ohio, having just watched them compete in a lacrosse match.

Cross had come to meet Laura through her college roommate Paige, whom Cross was dating at the time. Cross wrote the song as a way of offering comfort to Paige, and honoring Carter's memory.

I copied the lyrics to the song below, and also attached a link to the actual song. What a way to memorialize Laura.... through music. Now every time I hear this song, I think about a life taken too soon, the impact Laura's tragic death must have had on her parents and family (which I now totally understand!), and of course, when I hear "Think of Laura," I somehow THINK OF MATTIE. Though Christopher Cross is saying Laura would want us to LAUGH rather than cry, it is quite hard to do such a thing especially when the life taken too soon is your own child's.

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Hey Laura, Laura
Hey Laura, Laura

Every once in a while I'd see her smile
And she'd turn my day around
A girl with those eyes stared through the lies
See what your heart was saying

Think of Laura but laugh, don't cry
I know she'd want it that way
And when you think of Laura, well, laugh don't cry
I know she'd want it that way

A friend of a friend, a friend to the end
That's the kind of girl she was
Taken away so young
Taken away without a warning

Think of Laura but laugh, don't cry
I know she'd want it that way
And when you think of Laura, well, laugh don't cry
I know she'd want it that way

I know you and you're here
In every day we live
I know her and she's here
I could feel her when I sing

Hey Laura, where are you now?
Are you far away from here?
I don't think so, I think you're here
Taking our tears away

Think of Laura but laugh, don't cry
I know she'd want it that way
And when you think of Laura, well, laugh don't cry
I know she'd want it that way
Well, I know she'd want it that way

Hey Laura, hey Laura
I know, she wants it that way
Hey Laura, hey Laura
I know you want it that way
Hey Laura

Think of Laura: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfb12_6JnKw