This month’s Jennie Day was a bit of a milestone…for the first time since we started bringing food to the third floor oncology wards at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, we did not see someone we knew from Jen’s hospital stays in one of the wards. Up until this month, we always found someone in each ward who knew us, and knew and remembered Jen. We were forewarned, as one of our nurses told us they didn’t think anyone was working in that particular ward who was there when we were. For the first time, we had to explain who we were, and why we were there. We started telling the story, but stopped short and simply said we had set food out in the Arts ward and for the families and staff to help themselves. This was another subtle reminder that it has been over two-and-a-half years since we lost Jen, and there is an entire shift of staff at Maria Fareri who don’t know anything about Jennie’s story.
The meal itself was a rousing success, and we thank Jen’s cousins Catherine and Michael Cornell for sponsoring the March Meal. We served lasagna, meatballs, salad and a cookie assortment for both the Ronald McDonald House and the hospital. Everything smelled so good we were tempted to skip our usual after post-cooking dining out option and search out a good Italian restaurant instead, but in the end went with our old stand-by place.
We would like to also thank our supporters for filling out our meal sponsorship’s through July of this year. August through December remain available – please consider sponsoring a meal by visiting our sponsorship page. Everything we do is only possible with your generous support!