Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to us that you take the time to write to us and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful to us and help support us through very challenging times. To you we are forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically stop writing on September 9, 2010. However, at the moment, I feel like our journey with grief still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with us, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.


As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki and Peter



The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation was created in the honor of Mattie.

We are a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. We are dedicated to increasing childhood cancer awareness, education, advocacy, research and psychosocial support services to children, their families and medical personnel. Children and their families will be supported throughout the cancer treatment journey, to ensure access to quality psychosocial and mental health care, and to enable children to cope with cancer so they can lead happy and productive lives. Please visit the website at: www.mattiemiracle.com and take some time to explore the site.

We have only gotten this far because of people like yourself, who have supported us through thick and thin. So thank you for your continued support and caring, and remember:

.... Let's Make the Miracle Happen and Stomp Out Childhood Cancer!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

July 17, 2014

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2009. Mattie was pictured here with his buddy Maya. Maya is a clinic patient, but does not have cancer. She was the only same aged friend that Mattie made while at the hospital. Otherwise Mattie preferred much older friends! Mattie related to Maya. Maya is a lot like Mattie.... bright, engaging, very verbal, and speaks her mind. In fact, they met one day in clinic while sitting around the art table. Maya made a comment about not liking IV sticks and as soon as Mattie heard that, out of no where, he piped into the conversation and began talking. Which was unusual for him! From that moment on, they just clicked and played very well together as this photo clearly showed. They were quite creative together. In this scene they transformed a cardboard box into a planet and there were alien creatures involved. They performed a show for all of us who were willing to watch the entertainment that day in clinic and the show even had musical numbers!


Quote of the day: I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plants and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci


This coming September Peter and I will be acknowledging the fifth anniversary of Mattie's death, and yet despite the progression of time, there are aspects of grief and day to day living that I would say I/we still haven't mastered. I struggle with the fine balance of the need to isolate and protect myself from those I used to know (who are mothers) to finding ways of remaining connected. Either extreme doesn't work...... complete isolation or complete connectedness. Complete connectedness can't work because we no longer do the same things, we do not travel in the same social circles, or have the same interests. That is directly because Mattie died. I am not connected to a school, I am not raising a child, and therefore the typical mothering things one discusses and those stresses are off the table for me now. I have been instantly moved into the empty nester category. Except the one big problem is I am not an empty nester, my child doesn't exist. I have no one to check on, but have a lot of emotional baggage instead to live with. I assure you this is not pretty lunch conversation! 

It is hard to be around groups of women I once knew. Women in which we were united by our children! The natural conversation in these circumstances is our children. If Mattie were alive, I would be talking about him as well. They should be able to talk about their children and I should be able to hear about them, which I do. Yet, at the end of the day, I feel a greater sense of loss and a deep sadness because I can't explain why he is gone. People are talking summer camps and family vacations, and I am focused on the Foundation and writing book chapters about cancer. To me these are stark differences. Of course who said life is fair? I get it, know it, and don't like it. I guess as Da Vinci's quote seems to point out, I will always be looking for answers!


I came home and was feeling quite down. Rather teary. I bumped into Derrick, our complex's painter. He did not know how I was feeling but I was talking to him about my deck, which he painted for me in May! Which I was very grateful for, since without his help, I would never have gotten it together this spring! In any case, for the longest time Derrick has wanted to do a diamond pattern on my deck floor. So this afternoon, he came on over and repainted the floor. It was a lovely treat. While I was writing on the computer, I had my window open, the fountains going, he had his music on, and we were working in tandem. Some how it was wonderful company and as I told him, his diamond pattern reminds me of the beautiful pattern painted on the Cape Lookout Lighthouse in North Carolina! So I love it, I couldn't envision this, but thankfully I let Derrick convince me to do this! 

No comments: