Saturday, July 24, 2021

Saturday, July 24, 2021

Tonight's picture was taken on February 14, 2009. Mattie worked several hours in the child life playroom with his art therapists to create a Valentine's Day surprise for me. When I was allowed into the playroom, Mattie surprised me with a box of Valentines and a crown of hearts. This box has remained in my closet all these years. 

Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.

• Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 34,400,655
• Number of people who died from the virus: 610,720

Peter and I divided and conquered today. He and Sunny went to the house and I stayed back in DC to begin the cleaning out process. The painters were at the house all day today, they have gotten it together and are really working hard. We treated them to pizza, chicken wings, sodas and fruit today. I strongly believe in rewarding dedication and effort, and they have worked two weekends in a row. This is a pre-painting photo of our family room. There were holes in the wall, and the orange rectangle you see was left on the wall, after the former owners removed their TV from the wall. The previous paint was a grey color. I am NOT a grey person at all, and between the old color and the fact that the house hadn't been painted in 20 years, it really needed a refresh!

 

This is what the room now looks like. We removed the old mirror over the fireplace, all holes have been patched and the colors we selected are Medici Ivory and Extra White (on the baseboards and trim). You can't see it, but even the seams in the ceilings have been fixed. As there were two 10 foot cracks in the ceiling. 

Meanwhile, I decided to focus in on our walk-in closet today in Mattie's room. This closet has been a God sent. I can't tell you everything I store in there! Which is why we could live in this townhouse for 26 years, because the closets here are FABULOUS! 

Over the years, Peter hung shelves in the closet for me, which enabled me to try to organize things better. I have Mattie memorabilia, Foundation materials, supplies, and you name it! It's in there. I can't tell you how many times I have cleaned out this closet over the years. I try to do it every five years at least, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get into it. Certainly since Mattie died, I have combed through it several times. As more time passes since Mattie's death, I am able to actually make more sound decisions about his physical belongings. Some I can easily donate, and of course there are others that will just get re-organized and boxed to come with me. 

Mattie's room, or my office, looked like a bomb went off in it today. I started pulling out all sorts of things from the walk-in closet and when I tell you I was at it all day, I am not kidding. Yet if you look at what I done, it doesn't look like I even made a dent! I threw out a large garbage bag of old papers and have four large garbage bags for donation. 

While going through the closet, I found Mattie's valentine's box. The box I mentioned above in the photo of the day. This box means a great deal to me, but today I finally did something about it, as I had a spare shadow box in the closet looking for art work. 

Inside the valentine's day box. The box was filled with all sorts of Mattie creations, include the crown of hearts!

I arranged some of the meaningful pieces Mattie created and hot glued them inside a shadow box. If you look at the top left corner and travel down the diagonal, you will see the word, MOM spelled out. Mattie painted a MOM card for me. I cut the letters apart, so each one can be seen in the shadow box. I even hot glued the crown of hearts into the composition, along with several of the valentine's that Mattie actually signed. I am so glad that I will now be able to feature Mattie's work on the wall, rather than it sitting in a box. I have done this with many of his other pieces over the years. 

Inside the Valentine's box was also this dancing heart! You have to love Mattie's whimsy!!

What I did not remember was that I stored the funeral books that people signed in the closet, along with countless letters people wrote to me about Mattie. Because they are so meaningful, I have left the letters out, as I plan on typing them into the blog to share them. As I love hearing about Mattie through other people's reflections.