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

March 23, 2017

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2002. Thank goodness for Shutterfly. It is an on-line photo system that stores all of our photos. For some reason I can't find many of the electronic photos I stored on my computer. Not even in our back up folders. Thankfully when I went to our Shutterfly account, I was able to download many of the wonderful baby photos we took of Mattie. This is one for example. When Mattie was a baby he looked more like Peter. It was only when Mattie became a toddler, and certainly as preschooler, did he look just like me. Mattie was three months old in this photo..... but look how alert he was!!! As I always said, Mattie was born on and did not want to miss out on anything, which was one of the reasons he never napped. 


Quote of the day: All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche



Not that I wasn't aware of this already, but my life revolves around walking. I live in the city, which means walking is involved, I have an active dog who needs constant walking, and a lot of the work I do for the Foundation entails walking, carrying items, and MORE walking. After meeting with the doctor two days ago, I was disillusioned, especially since arthritis isn't something that improves with time. Given how awful it has been to even put shoes on, I have been worrying about my overall quality of life. 

In any case, despite how I feel, I keep moving. I have learned for the past 15 years how to live with daily chronic headaches and migraines. So I have a lot of experience with pain, but on top of that I am dealing with fibromyalgia and arthritis now. It's quite a combination. When I sit back and assess all of this, what I deduce is a lot of issues have arisen for me since Mattie's death. In a way, experiencing this trauma and loss has aged my body internally. People may look at me and think I am fine, but my battery of issues do say otherwise. 

There were times today, I wanted to say.... nope I am not doing this! But I did not give in an listen. Instead I went about my chores and even walked Sunny. While out with Sunny today, we bumped into several of our neighbors. It was like a block party, without the party. So this was a positive diversion, which once again I would never have had WITHOUT walking. 

1 comment:

Margy Jost said...

Vicki, I feel certain, that many health issues, you experience are directly related to Mattie's Cancer & death. The ultimate loss of his daily presence. You never got to watch and enjoy anything past seven. The year and a couple months, he lived post diagnosis were filled with watching him suffer, making hard decisions, watching him die. How could all of that not affect your body in harsh ways. I am truly sorry. I know you love walking and keeping active. I am hoping that you receive some help that makes it liveable even if it is a part of your life going forward.

Mattie does look like Peter in the picture tonight. He was a beautiful baby. He certainly changed though to look like you and that is obvious in every picture going forward. Thank you for sharing the picture. I love that you post pictures of Mattie. This way I get to know him at least a little