To John Mayer With Love

I don’t ususally post arti­cles on my blog that have been posted on other sites, but this let­ter was so beau­ti­ful I wanted to make sure as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble read it.

And after you’ve read it.…please visit THE ISAAC FOUNDATION to learn more.

Love, Laugh­ter And Hope

Writ­ten by Andrew McFadyen

As I type away at our blog, one of the first entries of our new web­site, I’m sit­ting in the play­room at The Hos­pi­tal for Sick Chil­dren in Toronto. My boys are play­ing together while Isaac receives his weekly Enzyme infu­sion, a treat­ment we worked so hard for him to get, and some­thing that is keep­ing him afloat until we can find a cure.

The boys are tired after a long night in Toronto. John Mayer was in town to launch his lat­est album, Bat­tle Stud­ies, and Isaac was anx­ious to recon­nect with his hero, friend, and favourite musi­cian. We con­tacted John and he arranged for our fam­ily to have some guest passes to watch the show and say hello before he took the stage.

Since hear­ing the news last week, Isaac and Gabriel have been VERY excited! They worked away at mak­ing a card for him, and then spent the night before the show before putting together a spe­cial craft that they could give to him as thanks for tak­ing the time to say hello.

Since the new CD came out, the boys have been tak­ing every oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten to the new music. They were thrilled to watch the online con­cert from New York last week and they jumped around and sang for the entire con­cert! Their favourite song is “Half of My Heart”, a song that, of course, fea­tures Tay­lor Swift, another of the boys’ favourite singers. When Mayer sang the song dur­ing his online con­cert, Isaac was puz­zled to learn that Tay­lor Swift would not be there to sing her part. “Well, who will sing it?” was the ques­tion he kept ask­ing. He decided that he would be the best can­di­date to replace Tay­lor Swift and pro­ceeded to make his card for John with that very pic­ture inside, with John singing his part and Isaac singing Taylor’s part.

Isaac and Gabriel also thought it was pretty funny to see John stand­ing on a car­pet while he was play­ing his gui­tar onstage, which pro­vided the inspi­ra­tion for their craft. They worked hard to make a pop-up card for him. When the card is opened, John, Isaac, and Gabriel pop up on stage. Of course, all three of them are singing and play­ing gui­tar on their very own car­pet. To say the least, it was an excit­ing week and fun week at home dur­ing the lead up to the show.

Head­ing into the show, we didn’t really know what to expect. The last expe­ri­ence for Isaac was incred­i­ble, and Mayer was so kind and car­ing that it was hard not to think about how dis­ap­point­ing it could be for him if he didn’t get the same warm recep­tion this time around. We fully under­stood that John is a busy per­son, and this con­cert was the kick-off to his new album in Canada, so we pre­pared Isaac that John might not have that much time to spend with him and even a quick hello would be very spe­cial. But once again, John showed how truly car­ing and com­pas­sion­ate he is and gave Isaac (and Gabriel!) another life-long memory.

Walk­ing back­stage, we joined the rest of the Meet and Greet win­ners and waited for every­one to be fin­ished with their photo-op with John. Isaac and Gabriel stood at the back of the room and watched with huge smiles on their faces as Mayer posed for a pic­ture with each group. When John spot­ted Isaac at the back of the room, he flashed a bright smile before return­ing his atten­tion to the Meet and Greet group. He took the oppor­tu­nity to sneak another smile and wave at Isaac before it was our turn and, upon see­ing this, Isaac went run­ning across the room to Mayer and gave him a big hug. It was, per­haps, one of the sweet­est things I have seen in a long time! Gabriel soon joined them and the boys pre­sented John with their cards and craft.

Mayer spent a lot of time talk­ing with Isaac, jok­ing around, and gen­uinely enjoy­ing the visit and the oppor­tu­nity he was pro­vid­ing our young son. And Isaac finally got to ask him what he was going to do for Tay­lor Swift’s part dur­ing “Half of My Heart”! John responded that he was going to let some­one else in the band sing the part which, I thought, would dis­ap­point Isaac. But, Isaac being Isaac, he brought us all to hys­ter­ics when he responded, “Well. Maybe we should unplug their micro­phone so nobody can hear them and I could come in and sing the Tay­lor Swift part instead!” After the laugh­ter sub­sided, John invited Isaac to his sound­check in Feb­ru­ary to sing the song with him on stage; a truly gen­er­ous offer. He then started singing the song, with Isaac fill­ing in Swift’s part. This will be a mem­ory we will cher­ish for­ever. I quickly snapped a photo with my cell phone, which I’ve posted on the right. As show time approached, our visit ended and John headed to the stage. Our fam­ily headed up to the VIP sec­tion to watch the show – Gabriel made it through 1/2 of it, Isaac watched it all, includ­ing the final song of “Friends, Lovers, or Noth­ing”, which was ded­i­cated to Isaac. The mar­vel­lous show capped off an incred­i­ble night.

For me, the most spe­cial part of the evening was when Mayer remarked on how healthy Isaac is look­ing. And he’s right. Isaac is as healthy as he has ever been and we are thank­ful every day for that. Not a moment goes by when we don’t real­ize how lucky we are to have him in our life and to under­stand how far he has come since we began this bat­tle. But we’re also very care­ful not to get too com­fort­able – you never know what the next doctor’s appoint­ment will bring, or what the next test will say. We’ve got­ten too com­fort­able before, and the pain comes back that much quicker if you for­get what you’re fight­ing. We were able to tell John about the excit­ing research we are fund­ing in Aus­tralia and New York City and our hope that one of them will lead to a cure.

Fam­i­lyI was very impressed with John Mayer last night. He took the time and effort to pro­vide Isaac with another pos­i­tive life expe­ri­ence and showed us that he is an incred­i­bly car­ing and com­pas­sion­ate per­son. He made our son feel spe­cial and showed us why he truly is a role-model we can be proud of for our kids. Say what you want about John Mayer (and many of you will), but from what we have seen of him shows us that he is noth­ing but one of the kind­est, sweet­est, car­ing peo­ple we know. Tabloids and news­pa­pers sel­dom write about the good in peo­ple; I guess it’s not what the world wants to hear. But John Mayer is more than what you see on TV or what your read about in mag­a­zines – he’s a kind, car­ing, man who has made a dra­matic dif­fer­ence in our lives.

For Ellen and I, his kind­ness reminded us that we still have Hope for a cure. We’re a small fam­ily, work­ing at a small char­ity, rais­ing small amounts of money, but we’re fight­ing the war of our life. Some­times we for­get how far we’ve come and the inroads we’ve made in order to make a dif­fer­ence in Isaac’s life and find a cure for him. See­ing how lov­ing John was with Isaac reminds us that we’re not alone – we have oth­ers dream­ing for the same thing we are, and I know that John will be there with us along the way to help make those dreams come true.

Our motto at The Isaac Foun­da­tion is “Love, Laugh­ter, and Hope”. Last night we saw and felt all three in John Mayer, and it couldn’t have been bet­ter. Thanks John.

And Thank you, as always, for your support.

(For more infor­ma­tion or to donate please visit: The Isaac Foun­da­tion)