Caleb Is My Hero

If you are looking for information on Caleb's journey with DIPG, please visit Caleb's blog.

Monday, November 28, 2011

What's In A Name?

Why does it seem that whenever I sit down to write, my mind goes totally blank? When I'm away from my desk, I can think of hundreds of things to say, but I sit down at the computer, put my fingers on the keyboard and -- nothing. Oh, well. Thank goodness this is just the beginning.

So, I guess I'll start with a brief history of the blog address and title. The blog address is to remember and celebrate the short life of my biggest hero, my son Caleb. Caleb was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor (DIPG) on 10.10.10. After a very short 5 1/2 months, he passed away in my arms on 03.25.11 at the age of 5 years, 7 months & 5 days. Throughout his journey & struggle with cancer, I maintained a blog to keep people updated on what was happening. I was very transparent with my thoughts & feelings. I still post to it occasionally to let people know how we are doing without him. I also created a Facebook page called Caleb Is My Hero, that I would use to update people that included links to the blog. However, I didn't create that page until after his death, so not a lot of people know about it. After creating that page, I thought about changing the name of his blog address to CalebIsMyHero to match the Facebook page, but realized that many people around the world already had the other address bookmarked and I didn't want them to not be able to find the blog.

When Caleb started kindergarten in 2010, he was a bit anxious. We began having separation issues (we later discovered those issues were because of the tumor). We went from riding the bus to me dropping him off in the car line to me walking him into the school and finally with me walking him to his classroom. In an attempt to calm him down and let him know that I was always near, I bought him a small pewter heart that says, "Always in my heart." He would put it in his pocket and when he was feeling anxious, he could put his hand in his pocket and hold the heart knowing that he was always in my heart. Somehow, during his cancer treatment, the heart was misplaced. I found it 10 days before what would have been Caleb's 6th birthday. I like to believe he helped me locate it to remind me that I am always in his heart as well. When I started this new blog today, I didn't want to put Caleb Is My Hero as the title because that's what I have titled the other blog. As I was thinking about a title for this one, I looked down and saw that little pewter heart that I keep on my keyboard and I just knew what the title had to be. Thus, Always In His Heart was born.

Since reading Caleb's blog, my friend, Staci, from 7 on a Shoestring has been trying to convince me to start a blog for product reviews & giveaways. She says I have a knack for writing. I guess we'll let others decide that as well.