Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2004. Everyone in my household LOVED Winnie the Pooh! In fact, when Peter and I went to college, our college president literally sounded like Winnie the Pooh. We joked about that often!!! When Mattie came into our lives, I happily introduced him to the wonderful world of Pooh and like many of us, he gravitated to the characters easily. Finding a costume for Mattie was always like looking for a treasure, because the trick was it had to be comfortable! It couldn't be restricting and he had to be able to easily move in it. Which was why I usually stuck with sweatsuit material. In any case, he made a memorable and rather adorable Pooh!
Quote of the day: One note is not music. It is what lies between the notes that makes the music. And what is between them is: their relationship. Relationships are the music life makes. Context creates meaning. Asking, "What is the meaning of life?" is the wrong question; it makes you look in the wrong places. The question is, "Where is the meaning in life?" The place to look is: between.” ~ Carl Safina
This morning I had the opportunity to visit Mattie's school to meet with his assistant head of school and the school's new head of school. Joan Holden, the school's former head retired in May. In fact, at our last Mattie Miracle Walk, we gave Joan a plaque and our thanks for supporting us for all these years. Joan allowed us access to her campus for the past five years to host the Walk. Which is a huge undertaking because that means access to tents, tables, all the facilities, grounds crew and the list goes on. The school doesn't charge us for any of our needs either which is beyond gracious. This enables us to make the most profit from the event and thereby directly help children with cancer and their families.
However with Joan retiring, I really wasn't sure where this left the Foundation with regards to hosting Walks on the campus. I am very grateful to Bob Weiman, or as my faithful readers better know him as "the magic man" for arranging this meeting today, for helping us keep Mattie's memory alive and for introducing me to Kirsten Adams, the new head of school. Kirsten is just delightful and spent 50 minutes with me. She wanted to hear about Mattie, the Foundation, and our walks. I thought that was very thoughtful and generous of her and I feel we have the start of a wonderful connection.
It is interesting as I was retelling our story to Kirsten, what amazes me is how vivid 2008 and 2009 will always be to me. These years have profoundly changed my life and the scars are very much internal, so you might not see the aftermath on casual glance at me. But they are there! When Mattie developed cancer, our lives became very public and in a way, people paid very close attention to us (though this wasn't something we necessarily asked for!). I do not want to say that our family had the same notoriety as Hollywood stars, but I would say we got massive amounts of attention from our community. That took a great deal of adjustment, given that we all led private lives and weren't used to having people popping in and out of our rooms at all hours, we weren't used to constant phone calls, and hundreds of emails! However, with the passing of Mattie and TIME, things did go back to NORMAL for people. But unfortunately NOT back to normal for us. The connections faded, the massive amounts of attention (the kind we did not want in the first place!) all disappeared, and we are left with memories. Wondering did it all happen? Did people forget? Because I know we are still grieving and yet the world seems to be revolving for everyone else around me!
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