Remembering Marshall

Blogging about Riley reminds me of when I was in college and I had links to info about Marshall and SMA in my IM profile. Well, now that it looks like I may actually have some readers I thought it might be time to blog about those thigns again. And August is SMA awareness month and Laurie said to tell someone so that more and more people know and can help make SMA disappear, so here I go. Some of you probably already know all of this, but this is for those of you who don't.

Marshall is Mark and Laurie's little boy who passed away because he had something called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). Links below:
http://www.curesma.org/
http://www.mda.org.au/specific/mdasma.html
http://marshallpotter.com

Well that was/is a big deal to me. Before Laurie had Marshall (when she was pregnant with him) we were hanging out on a much more regular basis, as Jay often hosted Movie Nights at Melrose and we went on a trip to Niagara Falls with a whole group of friends. When Marshall was born he was the first baby of our crew and we had big plans for him. I visited him a few times, once with Lanie (who was my flower girl), and he was a really cool little guy.

I was really upset when I found out about Marshall having SMA, and when he passed away I remember crying a lot and not wanting to go to work in the child labs at college because I was afraid I'd just bust out crying in front of the kids. I also remember seeing his tiny coffin go into the church while looking out of Chris and Sarah's apartment window...

Anyhow, I just wanted to give Marshall and SMA some blog time, although the subject is clearly a downer for obvious reasons. But hopefully some people who have never heard of SMA before just learned about it (by going to the links mostly) and increasing awareness is good. Also, hopefully, SMA will be curable some day. Ok, that's all for now pals.

P.S. I just went to Marshall's site (I just found a page where Melrose and Jay are thanked, so cool!) and watched the photoviewer. It makes me cry EVERY time I watch it. There are so many adorable pictures of him and all of the people in every picture are looking at him so lovingly. If you ever need a good cry, just check that out.