Friday, June 24, 2016

Friday, June 24, 2016

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2003. This was Mattie's first trip to the beach, specifically the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Mattie did not know what to make out of the Atlantic Ocean and all the sand. He actually hated both and did not want to spend more than a few seconds on the beach. We spent that entire trip playing on the deck of the house. After many more subsequent summer trips to the beach, Mattie eventually did a 180 and fell in love with the sand and the fun of building and creating. 

I know you see a dolphin jumping out of the water here. Clearly that did not actually happen in our photo. This photo was digitally created by our Facebook friend, Tim Beck. He loved Mattie's face and expression here and therefore took the photo and transformed it. 


Quote of the day: A tormented mind wants to forget, what a broken heart will always remember. ~ Anthony Liccione


There are days I do not feel like writing and today is one of them. I am just tired and not in the mood to share my thoughts or feelings. However, instead, I will share with you several compositions that Tim Beck created for us in memory of Mattie. Keep in mind I do not give Tim these photos. He finds the ones that speak to him on the blog and then transforms them!

This was a photo taken around Peter's birthday in November of 2008. This was the last birthday Peter spent with Mattie. Mattie was in the hospital recovering from his second limb salvaging surgery. But despite the trauma and the pain of that, he wanted to celebrate the day with Peter. 

I love this composition. It features a fall day and a wooded path.... not unlike what we would have seen along the path of Roosevelt Island. The easel on the right has a photo of Mattie on it. I snapped this photo of Mattie during one of our winter walks on Roosevelt Island (Mattie was holding a crinkly hedge apple, which he found on the Island). The easel on the left illustrates a Mattie creation. Mattie loved canvases and could go through several in one hospital visit. This abstract painting that Mattie made still hangs in our dining room today. 

This was the first art therapy project we did together in the clinic after Mattie was diagnosed. His art therapists got to know Mattie quickly and realized he was a Scooby Doo fan! So they traced a Scooby scene on a ceiling tile, and we spent several weeks painting it in. This tile still hangs on the ceiling of the clinic. 

This photo was taken around Halloween of 2008. My parents and I took Mattie out to lunch. I remember this moment very well because Mattie was in the process of building a haunted house in the middle of the table. 

Mattie loved his walker, or as we referred to it... "tot wheels." Mattie never crawled. He wanted to move right to walking and running, which was the beauty of having the walker. Mattie loved the independence and zooming around inside and out. The cute story here is you maybe asking yourself WHAT WAS MATTIE STARING AT?! The answer is me! Peter was taking the photo, but Mattie was transfixed on me. Which was not unusual..... Mattie always tracked where I was. 

Peter's colleagues in Edmonton, Canada sent Mattie Oilers jerseys and a cap. Mattie put on all the items and we sent photos to them as thanks! The amount of items, toys, cards, etc that Mattie received while battling cancer was OVERWHELMING. In all reality, I needed a warehouse to manage the inflow, and I am not kidding. After Mattie died, our home looked like an episode of Hoarders. It took me years to dig out of this chaos. 

Mattie at Christmas 2007. Mattie loved decorating our Christmas Tree and he especially loved his battery powered toy train that encircled the tree! 

Mattie was in the hospital and had been working ALL afternoon on a clay excavation project. Mattie chipped away at clay for hours until he unearthed a toy dinosaur. You can see the dinosaur by his hand. Mattie was so tired, he put his head on his arm. I snapped a photo of him, the finished product, and that moment in time.

This is my favorite hospital photo of Mattie and I, taken on Valentine's Day by Mattie's art therapist. I was asked not to be in the child life playroom that day so Mattie could work on Valentine's creations for me. When I was invited back to the playroom, Mattie surprised me with many handmade gifts. Including the heart crown that I was wearing. 

Pre-cancer, Mattie would on occasion spend some time with former students of mine. They were my built in babysitters. On this particular occasion Emily took Mattie to her apartment and she took this photo of Mattie on one of her chairs. Tim transposed it onto a locket!

This photo always makes me laugh! Every spring Mattie would bring home tent moth caterpillars from school. The first year he did this, I found it creepy. But since he liked them so much, I figured we might as well learn something from the experience. So I helped Mattie get jars to house the caterpillars, we fed them (they can go through oak leaves voraciously), and cleaned the jar daily. Caterpillars have great threw put, I assure you. After about a week or so, they would then spin a cocoon and then we would wait for them to emerge as a moth. Once they were moths, we then had moth releasing parties on our deck