Sunday, July 30, 2017

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Tonight's picture was taken in September of 2008. Mattie was in his second month of chemotherapy, prior to any of his surgeries. As you can see our home was beginning to be transformed into a hospital.... with all sorts of equipment. We had to get up to speed about giving Mattie IV fluids and medications and worse the daunting task of cleaning and flushing out his broviac. A catheter that directly attached to a central vein of the heart. In the beginning of Mattie's treatment, that catheter scared me to no end, given its location and the importance of keeping it clean. However, I am sharing this photo because it illustrates how loving Patches, our calico, was throughout all of this. At first Patches remained at home, but as Mattie's treatment got more intense we had no other choice but to board her with our vet for over a year. Patches had kidney issues and needed consistent care. We felt that our vet would be the most safest place to put her, so we did not have to worry about her or her health while we were solely focused on Mattie. 


Quote of the day: Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy. ~  Dale Carnegie


I think if someone asked me what the key to surviving loss and trauma were, my initial and most accurate response would be staying busy and having diversions. Now I am not implying that in between these diversions, one avoids focusing on thoughts and feelings. Absolutely not! One can try to avoid the reality, but eventually it will resurface. 

On weekends, which can be the hardest times in the week for us, we tend to try to stay busy doing things. Today's task was cleaning out our front hallway closet and our catch all closets in the kitchen. Two tasks I wasn't looking forward to doing. What you need to understand is that Mattie's things are pervasive in our home, even in the closets. So though I am an organized person, aspects of my closets can look as confused and chaotic as my head. 

Our front hallway closets had stacks and stacks of cookbooks. Now you could ask yourself how could purging cookbooks bring about sadness? I don't know but it did! For two reasons. The first is I found several children's cookbooks in my stacks. This one in particular was given to Mattie by one of my students, who was Mattie's babysitter. You can see that Emily wrote a message to Mattie in the book saying, "Hope we can do some cooking together! Happy 4th birthday." Unfortunately Mattie never used this cookbook. 

But the second reason this was so hard was because I looked at all my cookbooks, which I no longer use, and reflected on how I am NOT motivated anymore to experiment with new recipes. I neither have the desire or the energy. With the loss of Mattie, also came the loss of many aspects of myself. Tomorrow I am donating the majority of my cookbooks. 

After tackling the front hallway closet, we then moved into the kitchen. In my large kitchen closet, I store bags. All sorts of bags.... gift bags, recyclable bags, and even paper shopping bags. If you could see how many bags I pulled out of this closet, you would think I had a bag problem or obsession!

I significantly purged my bag supply today and totally reorganized the closet. Yet check out one of the bags I found! It says, "I love you Mattie, Love Kazu." This bag was given to Mattie during Halloween of 2008, by his close friend from elementary school. Needless to say, this bag went right back into the closet. I loved that bag then, and now 9 years later still love its meaning and sentiments. In fact, I snapped this photo and shared it with Kazu's parents, my friends Junko and Tad. I wanted them to know how much I have and continue to appreciate their support. 

What I have deduced about the loss of a child, is that even something mundane as cleaning out a closet, it never simple!  Mattie maybe gone, but physical aspects remain ever present in our home, which is also another reason I don't like cleaning out closets. I will never forget my first massive clean out of Mattie's things, which I did FIVE years after he died. YES FIVE YEARS! Prior to that point, I truly couldn't manage this horrific task. Yet regardless of how much I have cleaned out and donated, Mattie's things are always with us. The point to this is, I just never know when I will come across these items. Such as the cookbook and the orange bag. You can't prepare yourself for the unexpected or the feelings these items can evoke.