Spring 2008 Tree Dedication to Honor the Memory of Jenna A. Atturio

On May 17, 2008 Saturday at 1:00pm we will have a short dedication ceremony to dedicate the beautiful tree planted and donated by GW Dempsey Jr. Landscaping for our daughter Jenna. We know that this will be appreciated and have meaning of her life every time we see this tree located next to the bandstand in Hanover. This was one of her favorite places to go and meet friends and play soccer.
With the help of the Hanover DPW we had a granite plaque set at the base of the tree in her name. We will release Balloons for Jenna and two other young ladies who share a place in Heaven with her, Laura Linehan who died on April 4, 2008 before her second Liver transplant began. They were great friends here on earth spending time together at Children's Hospital, Mass General Hospital and together at our home swimming in our pool. They have another friend in heaven Torri Wightman who died at the young age of sixteen in a automobile crash almost two years ago. Her mother Lucy is one of our support and fellow club members, "that is the club which no one wants to join" consisting of parents who have lost a child.

We would like to get the word out to all for the need of organ donations, Jenna Ann Atturio Scholarship Fund which we award to a Hanover High school senior each year. You can donate to her fund at The Rockland Trust Bank, see information below.

Donations can be sent to:
c/o Jenna Ann Atturio Scholarship Fund
The Rockland Trust Bank
272 Columbia Road Rt. 53
Hanover, MA 02339

Laura Linehan Jenna's Friend Has Lost her battle with Liver Disease

Our hearts are broken today. Laura's Mom called from Florida Saturday at 9:00am 04/05/08, Laura is now in heaven with her best friend Jenna. May Jesus hold them together. She died during her second Liver transplant in Florida. This girl was beautiful full of life and like Jenna just loved being a girl.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/melrose/homepage/x1382801418

Summer time is around the corner

Its almost time.

Boston Globe Article

A Southern transplant
Globe Columnist / March 7, 2008
Laura Linehan's Web page depicts a vibrant and vivacious young woman surrounded by loving friends and family. In many photos, she looks as if she is having the time of her life.

Those images are in sharp but understandable contrast to the weary woman on the telephone yesterday who has liver disease. Among its ravages, the illness destroys energy. She sleeps as many as 20 hours a day.
Linehan, a Melrose native, is in Jacksonville, Fla., awaiting her second liver transplant. Even though she fell ill in a renowned medical center and was treated at one of the world's great hospitals, Massachusetts General, her best chance now to save her life is at the Mayo Clinic in Northeast Florida.
"I have my good days and my bad days," she said when I asked how she was feeling. "Some days I feel fine, and some days I feel like I'm absolutely going to die. Actually, I feel horrible today."
What on earth is she doing in Jacksonville? The answer is found in the country's convoluted system of doling out organs for transplants.
New England is chronically short on organs; Florida has a far larger supply. So in January, Linehan and her mother, Ann, moved to Florida, leaving behind family, an interior design business, and their entire support network.
"It's just crazy that you have to leave New England," Ann Linehan said this week. "We have the biggest, best hospitals in the world. It's just unbelievable."
Laura Linehan has not had a lucky life. She was born with a metabolic disorder that required a liver transplant at age 2. In the course of that transplant, she received a blood transfusion. This was before blood was screened for hepatitis, which she later contracted. By her late teens, it was clear that she would need another liver transplant.
Under the formula used to apportion organs, patients are assigned a score that roughly approximates the degree of their illness. Liver transplant candidates' scores range from 6 to 40, and the lower the number the healthier the patient is. The problem is, in New England patients have to be at risk of dying in a matter of months to reach the top of the list.
The situation is even direr for someone, such as Linehan, who needs a second transplant, because in these cases the new organ has to be nearly perfect. So, Linehan moved to Florida, where the list of recipients is shorter, and the supply of organs is bigger.
"Here, she would not be anywhere near the top of our list," her doctor, Dr. Daniel Pratt of MGH, said this week. "It would be many, many months. In Florida, she should have a transplant in the next few weeks." He added: "Our options were to let her stay here, getting sicker and sicker, or go to Florida, knowing she could get an organ much quicker."
Not everyone has the means to move to another state to improve his or her transplant prospects. That doesn't make it easy. Linehan's father and two sisters are in Massachusetts, visiting as often as they can.
While the system of distributing organs leaves much to be desired, the larger issue is a lack of donors, Pratt said. Not enough is done to recruit donors, and even some people who are willing to donate organs find those wishes thwarted by relatives after their death, Pratt said. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Americans die each year waiting for a liver transplant.
Having had liver disease virtually all her life, Linehan has seen what can happen to those forced to wait too long. Her lifelong best friend died during transplant surgery at 20. Linehan's outlook is far brighter. It seems cruel, though, that life and death can be decided so randomly. All she wants is what she has seldom had: a normal life.
"I want to go back to college," she said. "I want to get a job. It's been so long, and I've been so sick, that I just want to get my life back on track."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.

Make The Stupid People Shutup (Lucy's Pin She Gave to Me)

You know who you are. I can be stupid but at least I know it first.
Enough said do you understand? Do you understand?

Stirring up The Pot CB?

Gianna and Her Gang

What do you think about this cast doing a sleep over at our house Friday night. Toby is right there too he is the brown and white one.

A Rainbow for The Kids

I saw this rainbow on Tuesday November 06, 2007. I was driving home from the office and the rainbow came out of the farthest point my eye could see on RT 3 South and continued up and over my left shoulder to heaven. I could see the faces of kids we lost in the rainbow to the sky. My friend Lucy sent the photo today and it is just as I saw it.

December 22, 2007 Celebation of Jenna's Life

I woke up today and pulled myself out of bed and left for church. Not many people were there for the 11:30 mass due to the storm. I had to go I was told to go. St. Marys is a place I can be alone with God and Jenna.

I see her there smiling down on me and thanking me for keeping her spirit in our hearts. She told me today to keep the spirit of Christmas for mom and her sisters and I will. She will be there for my 55Th Christmas and I will be with her on December 22, 2007 at St Mary's church to celebrate her life..

The Monday after Thanksgiving is a very tough day for us with it marking the second anniversary of my father's death. His actual anniversary is November 28th but we lost him on the Monday after turkey day, which is today. My father loved Christmas and he loved to laugh, so today I thought I'd send something out to make everyone laugh and take their minds off things because it's a tough time of year for many of us.

Here's for the big belly laughs we don't get enough of:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9604521402

Report Card

A Mother passing by her son's bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then she saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to 'Mom' With the worst premonition she opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter. Dear Mom, It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you.

I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Dad and you. I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice. But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it's not only the passion...Mom she's pregnant. Stacy said that we will be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter.

We share a dream of having many more children. Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone. We'll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy. In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it.

Don't worry Mom. I'm 15 and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'm sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren. Love,Your Son, Jon.

P.S. Mom, none of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the report card that's in my center desk drawer.I love you. Call me when it's safe to come home.

Happy Birthday Jenna Ann Atturio

We know you are in heaven, we still see your smiling face. You are now 22 Jenna and we all love you.

Love U Bug, Daddy

What Is it with Humans

Over the last few days it finally hit me right between the ears. What are we doing to each other by talking about each other, its called human nature. As we are all guilty we try to angle and twist it so we begin to believe we are innocent. We are not. I use the word we. To disrespect someone with gossip and idle talk is as old as the dirt beneath our feet. Things that happen: lets list a few:



1. He said she said

2. You hear half the story

3. You hear what you want to hear

4. You become the other parties bad guy in their place

5. Your confronted with something you are accused of saying and cannot defend yourself

6. You sell out the people that supplied the information

7. We tell the accuser that's not what really happened

8. You now have to tell the accuser what their close friends said about them

So where are we right back where we started "we are all guilty".

When I was Crazy

We all must remember the car we loved when we were young. Someday I am going to get another 1969 Nova SS350. What was your favorite car? This was mine.

Bad Girls at Night

Do you think Lucy is a bit boo hoo that the 2 ladies are drinking her lemons!!!!

The Bug and The Bean

Jenna Atturio (The Bug) and Torri Wightman (The Bean)

Hope you are enjoying the delicious Apples!

Over the weekend we went apple picking at Honey Pot Hill. Here is a picture of all of us at the orchard by the scarecrow. We've all been eating apples like crazy.

Even The One Close Will Break Your Heart

The most beautiful rainbow.

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend.. You'll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back. Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

The Smell of Rain (Please Read this Slowly)

The smell of rain

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple's new daughter Dana Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine> ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. "

I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one" Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived.

She would never walk, she would never talk, she> would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on. "No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love

All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there

At last, when Dana turned two months old. her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital just as her mother had predicted. Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. B ut that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving , Texas , Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing.

As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain." Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"

Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain." Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest." Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.

During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

Verizon FIOS

What do you think of the Verizon commercials on television today? Have you noticed Verizon probably dumped James Earl Jones to market towards the younger generation?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME74lH039zc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMJyaQ_WuyE

The Summer of 2007

Friends and Family Complete the Circle of Life