Almost a month has gone by...

It has been almost a month since Mason passed away. We still have his little Spiderman couch in the class and the children love to cuddle up on it. We think of Mason frequently and we miss him.

Mason was a member of our class for a little over a year. During that year, we saw him courageously fighting to beat his cancer. Much of the time he was only able to come to school some days and for an abbreviated time. Often he would only be at school for an hour or two. During those times, however, he was able to be a normal school kid and live life like other kids. That was the point, to provide him with a normal school experience and have him be defined by something other than his cancer.

I believe that God brought his family to me. My wife had died of breast cancer a year before Mason joined my class and I was still grieving her loss when Mason joined my class. I felt at that point that I was the perfect choice for a teacher for him as I understand the fight he was going to be going through and had an inkling of what his parents were facing. I had helped Anne through the operations, the chemo and the radiation. During the year that he was in the class, there were times when he was very tired and feeling sick from his treatments, but he wanted to be at school anyway. Danielle would sometimes bring him in and pass him over to me and he would just settle into my shoulder and I would hold him till he felt ready to get up and interact in the class. The children were always very happy to see him and he loved school.

It's now been a little over two years since my wife died and I feel that helping Mason and his family go through this experience and being there till the end has helped me come to fuller closure on my wife's passing.