Owen is still inspiring people to do amazing things! A big thank you goes out to the faculty and students at Buffalo United Charter School, with a special thank you to principal Tammy Messmer.

They collected toys for Owen's Toybox, and will help to bring smiles to the faces of children who are ill! You guys ROCK!

http://www.wivb.com/dpp/health/School-fills-Owens-Toy-Box-at-hospital

Hugs to all of us who knew and loved Owen, to those who may not have known Owen personally but have been touched by his spirit, and to those who have experienced their own journey with cancer.

There may be reasons that we may disagree on things. There may be reasons why, otherwise, we may not have ever met. Yet we are here. Connected by the life of a child who was so loved, so sweet, so kind, and lived for such a short time.

May we all remember Owen and honor him in the way we live and see the world each day. There is beauty in everything if we only open our eyes to it.

Two years ago today, we found out that Owen had relapsed and began to live our final 6 months with him...
Missing you, as always, and we'll love you forever.

Owen was diagnosed with medulloblastoma in April of 2007...Medulloblastoma. Something I had never heard of or would have ever dreamed about having to know about, let alone learn how to spell. Yet this tumor in the brain and spine of my 3 year old son would change the course of our lives forever...

Cancer is hideous, horrendous, horrible and many other awful words. However, cancer, medulloblastoma, also taught us about hearts and hugs and finding happiness in everything, in every day.

As with any mother of an angel, I wish that his past had been different. I wish that he had never known life as a "cancer kid". That he had never experienced brain surgery, or radiation treatments, leaving his tender skin peeling and burned. I wish that he never had to have chemotherapy, that killed so many good cells along with the bad, causing him to spend many days and nights vomiting or with diarrhea so bad that we would not make it to the bathroom in time. I wish that he never had to reach up and run his fingers through his hair, ending up with a handful of it before we decided to shave his head.

Owen would do all he could to be sure that he was doing what he could to make others happy, no matter how he was feeling. One day, while lying in bed with him, I began to cry, overwhelmed with emotion. He snuggled in closer to me, patted me and said, "No tears, Mommy. No tears." When I accidentally poked myself recapping a needle when he needed a daily shot and began to bleed, Owen cried for several minutes until I put a band-aid on my boo-boo and finally convinced him that I would be ok.

I wish there were a band-aid for my heart...

Life without my son will not ever be the same. I miss him every single second of every single day. But life without my son would not have been the same. Owen taught me more about life in his 4 and 3/4 short years than I could have learned in a lifetime without him. The pain of losing him will never go away until I am with him again. However, I would gladly experience that pain to have had the chance to have and hold him for the short time that I was able to than not to have had or held him at all.