Jeni Stepanek on Mattie Stepanek's Legacy

Mattie Stepanek was a world-renowned poet whose mission in life was nothing short of promoting world peace. He died just before his fourteenth birthday, after battling a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Before his death, he inspired everyone from waitresses to firefighters, from Oprah Winfrey to former president Jimmy Carter. Now, five years later, his mother, Jeni Stepanek, pays tribute to his life in a new book.

"Mattie's body passed away five years ago but I wrote this book because Mattie's life is not about loss," Jeni Stepanek said today on "GMA." "His legacy is getting bigger every year. It was time to share the true story of his life."

She said from the time he was a small child, Mattie felt that his "purpose for being on earth was to be a messenger, to make people smile despite challenges."

The book is "going to make you laugh," she said. "It will make you cry in a few places ... but people need to understand that Mattie was an ordinary child who made extraordinary choices. Mattie's message is alive and each of us can choose to be a messenger."

Read an excerpt of the book below:

Sunrise on the Pier
The sky grows
Shadows, rising
With the passing of time. ...
The sky sighs,
Ebbing with tides
Of pre-dawn nothingness,
And yet,
Seas of everything created,
Tucked into waves. ...
The sun rises
Caressing spirits
With the passing of time
And the promise of hope
And the belief of life
12 MES S E N G E R
That gets better with age
As we edge into
The day that once was
Our distant tomorrow.
*From "Night Light" in Reflections of a Peacemaker: A Portrait Through Heartsongs.

Nell was getting more and more soaked each time the water sprinkler circled back around. She had fallen off the boardwalk into the beach grass on her way back from the ice cream shop and was now unable to get up, afraid she might have broken her leg. She also had a painful abrasion on her forehead.

Still, she was laughing to herself. While she waited for help getting to the emergency room, the sprinkler system came on automatically, and she knew the sight of her sitting there dripping wet was ridiculous -- even more so because Mema, who had gone with her for ice cream, kept running off each time the ch ch ch ch ch of the sprinkler circled around. Mema had wanted to stay right by Nell's side while others in the group went for help but had her hair done that day and didn't want it ruined. So she would jump back with each spray, apologizing from a distance about her visit to the beauty parlor. This made Nell laugh even harder.

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We were toward the end of our annual week at the beach on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Mattie and I had been coming every year since 1992, when he was two, courtesy of my dear friend Sandy Newcomb and her parents, Mema and Papa (whose real names are Sue and Henry Newcomb). They always stayed in a two-story condo right by the water -- a crazy flophouse with red and purple walls and more air mattresses and foldout sofas than bedrooms -- and they had us down for a week or more every July.

The summer of 2000 had been better than ever in the sense that all our kin were able to make it for at least a couple of days. By "kin," Mattie and I meant the family with whom you didn't necessarily share blood but with whom you're related through life. These relationships were always wonderful to him, whereas blood relations could be sweet or sour.

Our "immediate kin" consisted of Sandy, who by that point had become more like a sister to me and like a favorite aunt to Mattie; Sandy's daughters, Heather and Jamie Dobbins, and her son, Chris Dobbins (all were teenagers or young adults then); and Mema and Papa. We playfully called this group the "Step'obbi'comb Fam" -- combining Stepanek, Dobbins, and Newcomb into one "kinship unit."

Some "extended kin" were also a part of this beach vacation, including Mattie's best friend, Hope Wyatt; Hope's mother, Susan (Susan's husband, Ron, on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo at the time, was the one who brought Mattie the United Nations flag); and Nell Paul and her husband Larry. Sandy had met Nell in a La Leche class when they were both expecting their first children, and through her I had become good friends with Nell, too. Mattie called us the Three Granny'olas. It turned out Nell hadn't broken her leg after all. And although the gash on her forehead was a nasty one, it wasn't anything time and some pain medication wouldn't heal.

Nell had been a source of humor all week. The night we arrived, she explained that she was having health problems that made it difficult for her to stand on her feet too long. But she offered to help Sandy make a chicken tetrazzini dinner that night by calling out, without a hint of irony, that at least while sitting at the table, she could very easily "cut the cheese." When we all burst out laughing, she responded with some amount of confusion and indignity that "not being able to walk around a lot has nothing to do with my ability to cut the cheese" -- which only made us roar.

Nell grew up a preacher's daughter in the South in the 1940s and 50s and simply didn't know certain idioms and other common wordplays. We had such fun teasing her all week about the T-shirts you see at the beach with suggestive double entendres and such. We entitled that vacation "The Education of Nell," playing practical jokes on her as we went. One day I looked sidelong at Mattie with a mischievous gleam and said to her, "I suppose you've never heard the phrase 'duck on the head.'" Mattie went along and called out, "Mom, I can't believe you'd even tell her that. That's, like, rude." I then said to Nell with feigned indignation, "Never mind, we aren't going to go there."

Later in the week, Mattie and Hope staged a tattling scene wherein Hope accused Mattie of saying "duck on the head," and Mattie "defended himself" by responding that he was only telling Hope why she shouldn't say it, and I "scolded" both of them. Nell felt terrible. She had been repeating the phrase here and there in the belief we had been pulling her leg and thought it was she who got the kids going. We didn't disavow her of this notion. Then, on one of our last days there, we all tied tiny stuffed ducks to our heads and went around the side of the pool where Nell was sitting, quacking at her.