I’m not much of an artist. Matt wasn’t any Picasso either, but he liked to draw every now and then, and I thought his pics were pretty good. They certainly were imaginative.
Matt had a calendar on his refrigerator on which he’d map out the month in pictures. Sometimes the drawings were for upcoming events; sometimes for things that had transpired. At the end of the month he’d take a snapshot of the calendar, erase it, and then start all over again. Those calendar pics form a bittersweet record of Matt’s two year journey with GBM.
Apart from simply being something to pass the time, I think that calendar actually helped Matt in a number of ways. First, it allowed him to express himself creatively, which he had to find reassuring: his cancer couldn’t rob him of his talents and spirit. Second, it gave Matt the opportunity to picture things in the future that were positive. He told me as much. For sure, the upcoming scan made its appearance on the calendar (ever hear about scanxiety?), but just as certainly so did date night, or an upcoming visit from a friend, or a holiday dinner. Matt did his best to quite literally paint a picture of the future that remained full of life. That wasn’t easy for him to do, but he did it. He was a remarkable kid.
Where did I put my markers?