Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2007. That weekend we took Mattie to one of his favorite restaurants in Maryland. What he loved so much about that restaurant was the fact that it had a pond with fish and turtles in front of it.
Quote of the day: Miraculously recover or die. That's the extent of our cultural bandwidth for chronic illness. ~ S. Kelley Harrell
I always thought that Mattie's preschool was special. Mattie entered preschool in 2005. So that is ten years ago. Yet many of the moms I know and connect with today are from that school. These women helped us during Mattie's battle with cancer and now six years after his death, these same women volunteer for the Foundation. When Mattie was ill, I was focused on him and was not involved in the coordination of who brought us meals and gifts. I don't mean an occasional meal or two, I mean lunch and dinner for over a year, and gifts for Mattie practically daily.
This week, I have established a helper list for my friend who is dying from cancer. Naturally I reached out to my preschool mom friends to ask for help for meals, running errands, and other family support. In a world in which most people have the attention span of a text message, it is comforting to know that there are those out there who understand the magnitude of illness and the impact it has on a family. Yet again these preschool moms are banding together to offer help and will practically drop things to make requests happen. To me this is blog worthy because I found with Mattie, through the worst of tragedies, you discover certain beautiful things around you that you may have taken for granted before. Or that you did not even know existed! People helping people, always gets my attention and utmost respect.
Margy asked to see Mattie's tree, so we met at school on this beautiful 70 degree day. While there, it was recess time and kindergarteners were running around everywhere. We even got to talk to Donna (the teacher I visit each spring to do my three part art series for her students) and Leslie (Mattie's kindergarten teacher). I very much appreciate Donna giving me the opportunity every year to interact with her students, because this is really the only contact with children I now have, and she knows that is important to me. However, seeing many happy children running around today did make me pause. For me, Mattie will always be a kindergartener, so I can't help but reflect on him on this playground.
Margy brought the stone because she learned of the tradition of leaving a stone at a grave from one of her patient's families, who practices Judaism. There are many explanations for why visitors leave stones at a grave or memorial, but the one that I like best is that.... flowers, though beautiful, will eventually die. A stone will not die, and can symbolize the permanence of memory and legacy.
Denise knows I LOVE sunflowers and how they symbolize hope, community, and compassion to me. They do because when Mattie was battling cancer, our care community always gave me bunches of sunflowers when we were home between treatments. I fell in love with the sunflower back then because to me it captured such important sentiments and feelings and added brightness into our incredibly dark world. Sunflowers can bring me right back to 2008-2009, and though that was an incredibly painful time, it also showed me the beauty of people uniting together to help my special six year old battle cancer.
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