Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2003, Mattie was a year and a half old. Peter and I took Mattie to Los Angeles to visit my parents. In my parents backyard, they were growing orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees. Mattie absolutely loved the notion of picking fruit off of the trees, and as you can see in this picture, Mattie picked a wonderful grapefruit and was bringing it back to me. After he picked several fruits, he then sat down by the basket and sorted each one by color. Mattie's love for nature, growing, and cultivating things occurred at an early age, and we always encouraged him to participate in all the activities and chores we took on around the house. He did not view these things as chores, instead he viewed them as activities we would all do together. Empowering children to take on responsibiity at an early age is something that I always felt was crucial, and this enabled Mattie to see that our home belonged to all three of us, and therefore all three of us were responsible for caring for it.
Quote of the day: Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water. ~ Antoine Rivarol
Peter and I spent the day with Ann and her family. When Ann’s husband, Bob, goes out of town, we try to help her manage her children’s activities on the weekend. Ann’s cousins are visiting, so we had the time to connect with them today.
Ann and Peter ran around most of the day, and I stayed at her house and was the point person there. During the day, I had the opportunity to play board games with the children (and I learned that monopoly has changed quite a bit from when I was growing up….. it now involves credit cards and millions of dollars in transactions). In the afternoon, as it got warmer out, Abigail (Ann’s youngest) and I went outside.
Some of my faithful readers may remember that Abigail likes to climb trees. Though we haven’t been outside all winter, we returned back to tree climbing today. An activity we started with each other last spring. The funny part is Abigail remembered the story we created last spring while tree climbing. This story involves dogs named Little Jack and Big Red. To my surprise we picked up where we left off story wise today.
This means several things to me. Abigail enjoys this type of imaginative and creative play and has connected our time at the tree with building upon “our” story. I appreciate the trust and responsibility Ann gives me, and yet I also realize that being around a family and in a neighborhood filled with other children reminds me of Mattie’s loss on a very profound level.
As I say often, losing Mattie has absolutely impacted every aspect of our lives. Naturally Peter and I lost our identity as parents, we lost our weekend identity (which involved uniting as a family and spending time with Mattie), but we also lost our ability to connect with friends and those who have families. I am sure from an outsider’s perspective you may be saying… how could that be? Friends are friends! It is true, but friends are usually united by commonalities. Our friends became our friends because we were united by the simple fact that we were all raising children. So what happens when you lose a child, and that commonality is gone? Well the answer is, it is a STRUGGLE.
In addition, to every other emotion we were balancing today, we learned that Mary’s (Ann’s mom) roommate at the assisted living facility died today. I have grown very fond of Mary’s roommate, Janet. Though she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, you could tell she must have been a very honest, hard working, and loving lady at one time. Typically I visit Mary when I am at Ann’s house, but Ann did not want me to visit today because Janet was experiencing what I have come to call, “the death rattle.” Like Mattie, Janet’s lungs were filling with fluid and the sound one makes while trying to breathe through all this fluid is memorable and frightening. Part of me understood what Ann was trying to do, which was to spare me hearing that sound and sparing me from experiencing yet another death. I suppose what I have learned is that death doesn’t come or look the same for all of us.
I watched Ann’s father die, and heard about Janet’s death. Both died relatively peacefully, thankfully. However, hearing about death reminds me of Mattie’s. Mattie not only suffered through cancer, but his death was horrific. It is not only a mom’s personal recollection, it is a fact. I was surrounded by medical professionals who were crying and also besides themselves. Mattie did not die naturally. He was hooked up to IV pain pumps, but that wasn’t cutting the pain. He was screaming between infusions of pain meds. Since the pumps weren’t working to alleviate the pain from the cancer, Mattie was also given additional dosages of pain meds through syringes. Syringes were given almost every 2 minutes toward the end. Mattie’s bed looked like a land mine, filled with empty syringes everywhere! However, after six intense hours we had to induce a coma in Mattie using propofol, because he simply did not want to die and leave us. In my mind, I will always recall his death. Saying goodbye to Mattie was hard enough, but watching him die in traumatic pain and gasping for air was a torture I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. When I see and hear about a peaceful death, it upsets me, because this was something that Mattie most definitely did not have. I do not like admitting my feelings about death or that I feel resentful regarding peaceful deaths, but I do. There is anger I have from Mattie’s death that is fully entrenched within me and which I have yet to work through.
I also knew that tonight was Mattie's school's annual gala/auction. Obviously I know parents who we knew would be in attendance. Parents who still have their children and whose world hasn't been rocked by the death of a child. It is a frustrating feeling, it is a stressful feeling, and mostly it is a feeling of anger and at times bitterness that unfolds within me, because life goes on for everyone else but not for Peter and I.
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