Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2008. Mattie was in kindergarten and as you can see he was jumping on his bed with his friend Charlotte. I had picked both of them up after school for a play date. This was Charlotte's first visit to Mattie's home. If you notice closely, Mattie not only had his mattress on his bed, but he also had an aeromattress on top of his bed, underneath his comforter. Mattie did all sorts of funny things like that. I did not let him sleep on top of these two mattresses, but he would play around with all sorts of mattresses by day! Mattie would get into just about everything, and the possibilities were endless. The one thing I do remember about his friendship with Charlotte was he used to get her to laugh instantaneously! Charlotte's laugh was contagious. When you heard her laugh, you just wanted to laugh right along with her! They were great friends and their friendship practically formed on the first day of school.
Quote of the day: Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being. ~ Kevin Kruse
As time moves on, and I get further and further from Mattie's death, I find that some people I interact with my opinion and outlook about parenting and child rearing just doesn't matter to them. It simply doesn't count because in their minds I am not raising a child. I suppose technically they are correct, I am not actively raising a child now. However, there is one major problem with this notion and that is I once was a parent and I have experience of raising a child. Not just raising any child. I raised a child who had sensory issues, then raised a child who was typically developing, and then cared for a child who had cancer. I did this in seven short years. At the end of these seven short years, I also had to watch my child die. These life circumstances have taught me a great deal and while enduring Mattie's treatment, we also lived within a hospital setting for a year.
There are times I try to share my lens with my friends, friends who are raising healthy and typically developing children. After all, I can remember living the same lives as my friends! The life of a busy mom, rushing from one activity to the next, trying to balance and juggle so many things. This was the way my life was before Mattie developed cancer. Life seemed chaotic. Then Mattie developed cancer and our world came crashing down around us. What once seemed chaotic (chores, cleaning our home, running to the grocery store, working, planning things, having a future, etc) became something we LONGED for!!! We wished for these everyday and normal concerns! Mattie's cancer and death gave us a perspective that perhaps few can obtain in this world, and thankfully so, because I would hate for everyone to gain such knowledge in such a heart wrenching and agonizing manner. Yet at times I want to share these insights with other parents so that they can live in the moment with their children and appreciate what they are lucky enough to have.... a healthy child.
It is hard for parents who have children with cancer or parents who lost a child to cancer, to hear parents with healthy children lament about their lives. Lamenting about everyday concerns...... their schedules, plans for college, planning weddings, plans for the future, etc. For us in the cancer world, the plans revolve around chemo, worrying about survival, and managing endless loss and grief. These are the major differences between us (parents with healthy children and those who have/had children battling cancer) and yet we have to co-exist. It is challenging and in many cases it can lead to a great deal of miscommunication and hurt feelings between both parties. I do think for friendships to work between these two different parent sets, there has to be an understanding of thoughts and feelings and feelings have to be allowed. They have to be shared in order to avoid misunderstandings and frankly in order for more healing for the bereaved parent to continue to occur.
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