Tonight's picture was taken on October 17, 2008. This was NOT an pre-arranged photo! It was rather spontaneous. I took Mattie to the track of his upper school campus to meet his friend Charlotte. While there, we ran into Coach Dave (an avid Mattie supporter), who was at practice with his football team. As you can see the whole team stopped practice to snap a photo with Mattie! During Mattie's year long battle the football team did many things in honor of Mattie. They did a Mattie cheer before games, they gave him a signed football, and a big poster of this photo with all their signatures on it!
Quote of the day: Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew. ~ Saint Francis de Sales
For those of you who spend any significant amount of time on Facebook, what I am telling you probably won't come as a surprise. Facebook for the most part is filled with (putting news feeds aside), parent updates about children -- their daily happenings, milestones, events they attend and so forth. In all reality it makes it easier for people to connect and get updates about each other in our very frenetic all too busy world that we live in. Yet what happens to those of us who have lost our children? Certainly there is the cancer community that is also present on Facebook and for some this is a very helpful outlet. However, what I find is I do not relate to either group (the healthy or the cancer community) on Facebook.
Certainly being bombarded with happy photos of intact families minute by minute can send me right over the edge on any given day. I am truly happy for my friends who have healthy children, but I wouldn't be human if I did not stop and pause and wonder why I am not one of those lucky ones? When these feelings overwhelm me, I know that means I need to back away from the computer.
One of the things I watched on PBS today was a special called, Mary Tyler Moore: Celebration. It featured Mary Tyler Moore's career and insight into her personal life. I did not know her only child shot himself to death, nor did I know the subject matter of the movie, Ordinary People. A movie which reinvigorated her career after the Mary Tyler Moore show ended. Ordinary People, in a way mimicked her own life, since it is about the death of one of her sons and how this fragmented the lives of all those who remained in her family. Yet in real life, her son shot himself after the movie was filmed, and I just wonder what her performance would have been like, if the opposite had occurred. If her son died before the movie was created.... my hunch is it would have been a lot harder to act her part or she would have had personal insights that would have impacted her role.
The one hour special, Mary Tyler Moore: Celebration, can be watched here if you are interested:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365572188/
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