Tonight's picture was taken in June of 2006. This was CLASSIC Mattie! Mattie had access to all sorts of toys! However, other than Legos, I think a close second favorite were cardboard boxes. There really was no telling how Mattie could transform a box!!! He could reshape it, build upon it, and decorate it! Some of his best box creations were an apartment complex with a working elevator as well as a prop plane. I will never forget the prop plane. Mattie built it at Sloan Kettering in NY. Linda, Mattie's Child Life Specialist, contacted the child life specialist in NY and suggested she save boxes for Mattie's arrival. Well this lady saved a very large box for Mattie and several smaller one. The Sloan Kettering folks couldn't get over how Mattie transformed this box. It became a beautiful plane that he painted blue. Mattie was so attached to this plane that we had to take it in a taxi with us to the hotel. Mind you this thing was as big as I am! We took photos of the plane but left it in NY because if we had taken it there wouldn't have been enough room in the car for all of us to get back to DC.
Quote of the day: Time is our most precious treasure because it is limited. We can produce more wealth, but we cannot produce more time. When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will never take back. ~ Alexander the Great
My dad sent me tonight's quote from Alexander the Great. I truly believe in the sentiments of this quote. We live in such a BUSY world today where we really do not have time to even listen and support each other. It is no wonder why the counseling profession is SO BUSY. But giving of our time is actually quite selfless. These are moments we will never get back again and at times these moments may be viewed by others as wasted time. After all, in helping someone else it directly takes away the time one needs for one's self. Yet I do not believe that time spent with others is unidirectional. Some of the best gifts one can receive is the personal connection, understanding, and the sharing of thoughts and feelings that can ONLY occur when you are giving of your own time. The beauty of love and friendship is that it must be nurtured and the only way to nurture something is with the devotion of time. May we all be able to devote time to those around us as well as be the recipient of others' time. Chances are if you think about some of your life's greatest moments I bet they revolve around spending time with someone!
I think dealing with the loss of an only child is like watching a leaky sink faucet. The water is always dripping, that is a constant, yet over time and most days you can ignore the drip. You get used to it! It is there, but manageable. However, sometimes the drip becomes a full fledged problem and water goes everywhere. Not unlike grief, at times the pain from the reality becomes like a flood. You can't compartmentalize it, instead it leaks out and through everything. How you look at the world, the people around you, and tomorrow and the next day. Typically Peter and I both "leak" daily but there are occasions when we both "flood." Mind you it is fortunate that our flooding usually doesn't occur at the same time. That way one of us can support the other. But when the leak becomes a flood for both of us, then the challenges arise. This week, we are both overwhelmed from various things or triggers and it becomes hard to know how to handle this, because it takes a lot of strength to pull one's self out of this funk, and there is very little left over to give to the other person. So this is where we are at. Tonight we are heading back to Wolf Trap, the outdoor amphitheater and it is my hope that a musical distraction will temporarily help the situation. I leave you tonight with a meaningful email that is floating through cyberspace regarding Alexander the Great's last wishes.
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The last wishes of Alexander the Great:
On his death bed,
Alexander summoned his generals and told them his three ultimate wishes:
1. The best
doctors should carry his coffin;
2. The wealth he
has accumulated (money, gold, precious stones) should be scattered along the
procession to the cemetery, and3. His hands should be let loose, hanging outside the coffin for all to see.
One of his generals who
was surprised by these unusual requests asked Alexander to explain.
Here is what Alexander the Great had to say:
1. I want the best
doctors to carry my coffin to demonstrate that, in the face of death, even the
best doctors in the world have no power to heal.
2. I want the road
to be covered with my treasure so that everybody sees that material wealth acquired
on earth, stays on earth.
3. I want my hands
to swing in the wind, so that people understand that we come to this world
empty handed and we leave this world empty handed after the most precious
treasure of all is exhausted, and that is TIME.
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