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

August 18, 2011

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Tonight's picture was taken in September of 2007. As I mentioned in last night's blog picture, we took Mattie to his first Washington National's game that year. Peter and Mattie bought hats that day at the park. One never expects a "thing" to outlast a child. But the hat remains despite the fact that Mattie is no longer with us.

Quote of the day: Love is stronger than death even though it can't stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can't separate people from love. It can't take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death. ~ Unknown

I began my day by meeting with Marisa. As many of my blog readers know, Marisa was one of Mattie's caregivers in the summer of 2009. Marisa has also been in charge of our Foundation Walk bake sale two years in a row. This summer, Marisa has been working with Peter and I on social networking. Specifically on how to use social media to promote the Foundation. Today, Marisa gave me an hour long tutorial on how to us Twitter. Though I like electronic forms of communication, I haven't taken to Facebook or Twitter. For some reason I just don't like this mass communication capability (funny since I write a blog!). However, for the purposes of the Foundation, I realize we have to get up to speed on these communication networks. After working with Marisa, I feel much more confident in using Twitter. In fact, it is a lot easier for me to understand than Facebook. So as I build up our Twitter followers, we will be using this form of communication as well. Twitter reminds me of an electronic form of a telegram. The messages blasted out to readers are short and to the point. No longer than a sentence typically. I appreciate Marisa's help and support, and we wish her well on her upcoming term abroad to Florence. We will miss her.

I took on various projects at home today and by lunch time, I decided to text message Peter to see if he wanted to meet for lunch. I think transitioning from vacation back to work is very challenging, and I am trying to break up his week for him, because his 12+ hour days can be all consuming. Typically we eat lunch near where he works, but today I changed things up and we went to a new restaurant that was built in our neighborhood. It was nice to try something new, but neither one of us was thrilled with our lunches.

At lunch one of our conversations centered upon life decisions. Specifically how a person can try to be responsible and do all the "right" things to assure one a good future, however, in the end, some times bad things happen anyway.  Despite all the planning and despite all the best intentions. The death of a child illustrates better than any other example that life is really out of our control, and when you learn this lesson, it clouds how you view others, and how you view your future. The future doesn't have the same promise or hope.


The irony is as the day moved on and I continued to feel this way, we had a major storm. Filled with rain, lightning, and horrendous thunder. As the storm was coming to a close, Peter called me outside on our deck to see this sight. He was correct, as quickly as this sign came, it disappeared just as quickly. Seems to me we were meant to see this rainbow tonight.




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