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

May 5, 2014

Monday, May 5, 2014

Monday, May 5, 2014

Tonight's picture was taken on May 11 of 2009, during the Mattie March held at his school. What I love about this photo was it wasn't posed or expected. It just captured a moment between friends! It wasn't raining, instead the sun was shining and Mattie's two buddies, Brandon (Mattie's Big Buddy and a cancer survivor) and Robbie (a buddy and child life volunteer) were trying to protect Mattie's very bald head from getting burned. Mattie did not like wearing a hat and truly wasn't at all concerned by the fact that he had no hair. Thankfully on that front Mattie did not mind that he looked different. Now if you went deeper and focused upon the fact that Mattie was confined to a wheelchair and had surgical scars, then Mattie minded greatly how different he was! The photo was taken right before the ceremony we hosted in which we spoke directly to Mattie's support community and then acknowledged all his nurses and caregivers with beautiful Hawaiian leis! Mattie enjoyed the "March" and the support that day, it was one of his happier moments.


Quote of the day: Our lives are like quilts – bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love. ~ Unknown


As I mentioned a few days ago, we were expecting the hand designed memory quilt to arrive in the mail! Well that day has come!!! It is hard to believe that in October I mailed off 30 shirts and articles of clothing of Mattie's and over the course of a couple of months, Terri transformed them into this beautiful quilt. It is hard to describe how moving this is and how huge it is. Its dimensions are 90 by 108 inches! Once I get it up on the wall, which will be feat, I will photograph it again, because what you can't see are the corners. In each corner Terri hand stitched a sun or a moon! The perfect symbols for Mattie! This is truly a work of quilting art!




I took some close up shots of some of the patches in the quilt. This one belonged to one of Mattie's Scooby Doo
pajamas. However, in Mattie's clothes I occasionally ironed in name tags so he wouldn't lose his clothes at school. Terri took some of these name tags and incorporated them into the quilt in cute places, like as a license plate on the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. Mattie would have absolutely LOVED this!

I loved seeing the fact that Terri preserved the Puppy Feet! This was one of my favorite parts of this jumper! It is just whimsical to see this hanging from the quilt!














Seeing these two shirts side by side is fascinating because the blue shirt is from Mattie's preschool and the white shirt is from Mattie's elementary school. It is just very nice to see them presented this way and to also see Mattie's name tag as the "Super Saint!" The Saints are Mattie's school's mascot, but I personally like the way Terri personalized this!



Mattie loved bugs, alligators, trucks, and boats and they are all depicted here. But I personally love seeing the suspenders and the zip integrated into the quilt. It makes me feel like I could almost picture Mattie almost wearing this outfit. 













Lastly, This pumpkin belongs to Mattie's very first Halloween costume. I still remember picking it out for him! Above the pumpkin is a t-shirt from the LaBrea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, a place Mattie LOVED visiting each time he went to California. The quilt holds many memories for us and when Peter saw it, he was over taken with emotion. I had seen the quilt during its construction phase through photos so I was better prepared for the final result. But it is indeed overwhelming to see Mattie's things before us in this amazing format. 

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