We wish every child and family and staff at Sickkids the very best for the holidays and in 2009. The time can feel a bit surreal. Exhausted families appreciating every moment with their child. Staff working holidays, covering for colleagues taking a break. Single parents, partners, siblings, brave patients all trying to keep it together. Smiles and tears. Wonder about the future. Families in groups, napping on sofas and streaming quietly into rooms. An unusual quiet in the public spaces. It's a time of great generosity, hope and heightened feeling in an already emotionally saturated place. Three years ago on December 14 Sasha went for her second cardiac surgery, her eighth proceedure, and nothing went as we hoped. It was before chanuka so this picture above is our one and only. I will never forget the early morning sun bathing room 74 in light on new years day after two weeks. I shooed some nurses laughing because Sasha was light on the morphine, starting to awake and looking uncomfortable and I desperately wanted her to sleep and wake up stronger. Now three years later, Mia and Eve light chanuka candles and our little family is in a different place and yet Sickkids is never far from our thoughts. We wish you comfort and joy and look forward to helping in whatever small ways we can next year. Here is our little family now with Mia lighting Sasha's menorah and coincidentally wearing her bravery bead necklace.
