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

October 21, 2015

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2007. That weekend we took Mattie to one of his favorite restaurants in Maryland. What he loved so much about that restaurant was the fact that it had a pond with fish and turtles in front of it. 




Quote of the day: Miraculously recover or die. That's the extent of our cultural bandwidth for chronic illness. ~  S. Kelley Harrell


I always thought that Mattie's preschool was special. Mattie entered preschool in 2005. So that is ten years ago. Yet many of the moms I know and connect with today are from that school. These women helped us during Mattie's battle with cancer and now six years after his death, these same women volunteer for the Foundation. When Mattie was ill, I was focused on him and was not involved in the coordination of who brought us meals and gifts. I don't mean an occasional meal or two, I mean lunch and dinner for over a year, and gifts for Mattie practically daily. 

This week, I have established a helper list for my friend who is dying from cancer. Naturally I reached out to my preschool mom friends to ask for help for meals, running errands, and other family support. In a world in which most people have the attention span of a text message, it is comforting to know that there are those out there who understand the magnitude of illness and the impact it has on a family. Yet again these preschool moms are banding together to offer help and will practically drop things to make requests happen. To me this is blog worthy because I found with Mattie, through the worst of tragedies, you discover certain beautiful things around you that you may have taken for granted before. Or that you did not even know existed! People helping people, always gets my attention and utmost respect. 


Today I went to Mattie's school with my friend Margy to visit the memorial tree. Margy is a new friend of mine that I met through Facebook. Typically I do not meet friends on Facebook, but we have many mutual friends in common and we are both united around childhood cancer. Margy was a play therapist for many years helping children with cancer and their families, and is still very active in non-profit work. 

Margy asked to see Mattie's tree, so we met at school on this beautiful 70 degree day. While there, it was recess time and kindergarteners were running around everywhere. We even got to talk to Donna (the teacher I visit each spring to do my three part art series for her students) and Leslie (Mattie's kindergarten teacher). I very much appreciate Donna giving me the opportunity every year to interact with her students, because this is really the only contact with children I now have, and she knows that is important to me. However, seeing many happy children running around today did make me pause. For me, Mattie will always be a kindergartener, so I can't help but reflect on him on this playground.  


Margy placed this beautiful orange stone under Mattie's tree in honor of his life. Needless to say, each time we visit the tree, I will be looking for this stone. 

Margy brought the stone because she learned of the tradition of leaving a stone at a grave from one of her patient's families, who practices Judaism. There are many explanations for why visitors leave stones at a grave or memorial, but the one that I like best is that.... flowers, though beautiful, will eventually die. A stone will not die, and can symbolize the permanence of memory and legacy.


When I arrived home this afternoon from my time with Margy, I found these flowers sitting on my doorstep. My friends Denise and Dave sent them to me, just because. That to me is the nicest way to receive flowers, for no particular occasion.

Denise knows I LOVE sunflowers and how they symbolize hope, community, and compassion to me. They do because when Mattie was battling cancer, our care community always gave me bunches of sunflowers when we were home between treatments. I fell in love with the sunflower back then because to me it captured such important sentiments and feelings and added brightness into our incredibly dark world. Sunflowers can bring me right back to 2008-2009, and though that was an incredibly painful time, it also showed me the beauty of people uniting together to help my special six year old battle cancer.  

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