Matty

  30 years ago, I learned what a NICU was. Before Matty was born, I may have known what the letters stood for but I didn't really know what it was. How scary it was for a new parent. Matty was born two months premature. A week earlier we had taken my Isuzu Trooper into my cabin and gotten it stuck in the mud.

 Matty and I loved watching movies and TV shows together. Here are some of her favorite shows: Star Wars Episodes 4, 5, 6. I watched these with Matty starting around age 2 or 3. Toy Story: Matty collected all the toys from this series from restaurants or as collectibles and liked to arrange them like different scenes from the movies. Home Alone (1990): This was one of the movies we had that Matty would skip to about half way through and start watching. In this case, Matty liked to start after the house was trapped and the burglars showed up. Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990): Matty loved all three of this series. Mulan: I think Matty liked watching this as an adult.  A Goofy Movie (1995): Came out when Matty was 3. We saw Goofy at Disney world that year but Matty did not like it. Muppet Treasure Island and Muppet Christmas Carol were two movies that we watched again and again. Galaxy Quest Princess Mononoke The Fifth Element I tried to get Matty to watch ET but he hated it. Labyrint

  Halloween was Matty's favorite holiday. Here are some pictures of previous years.

8/17/2023 On Monday  (8/14/23) I called the Ramsey County medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Matty. He said that Matty had inflammation of the thyroid gland. I am trying to think of a scenario where this could result in death. Matty had some symptoms which were consistent with a thyroid condition; fatigue, hair loss, and sensitivity to cold temperatures. Matty had caught a cold at the beginning of November. Illness can exacerbate a thyroid condition. The room Matty slept in was cold, that night, dropping into the 50s. The thyroid regulates body temperature, so I see Matty's body not maintaining temperature until Matty passed away in her sleep.  It turns out Ramsey Co. was waiting for Dunn Co. to get back to him about the genetic study, so I called Dunn Co. and she thought she had already approved it. Not that I think the genetic study will show anything. He said that he could tell Matty had some respiratory infection but that would not have been fatal. When I look online

It feels like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat over and over again. It feels like getting punched in the gut repeatedly. It feels like you are at the bottom of a hole and you can't climb out. That's as far as I've gotten.

  6/11/2023 When a person is gone they live on mostly through the stories we tell about them, so I’m going to tell some stories about Matty, and I hope some of you will share your stories as well. Matty was my best friend, my constant companion, my collaborator, my son, and my daughter. Matty and I shared a hive-mind and if you don’t know what that means, it’s OK, Matty would have. Matty and I almost always knew what each other was thinking, Matty always got my jokes, we shared the same sense of humor, if I came up with an idea Matty was always quick to build on it. Matty shared my love for fantasy and science fiction. I could always count on Matty to be my partner whether it was for skiing, gaming, biking, hiking, inner-tubing, dancing, or canoeing. If anyone asks me the best day of my life, the answer is easy; the day Matty was born, even though it was fraught with difficulty and trauma. That was one of the first times Matty surprised us, arriving two months premature. Laurie’s docto