Last month I was in Chicago at the Gecko Hospitality conference where we spent two days discussing how to better help our clients with their staffing needs. On Tuesday night we flew in to Chicago early in order to prepare dinner at the Ronald McDonald House at the University Of Chicago Hospital. The gecko team of recruiters prepared homemade meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, salad and a chocolate cake that looked like it came from the cover a Saturday Evening Post in the 1950’s.
Now I’m not sure if you ever been in a Ronald McDonald House but they tend to be at hospitals that specialize in treating children for cancer. The Chicago house is amazing, having room for 35 families and a kitchen large enough to host a reality TV show. The 35 families staying in the house, live there rent free while their children undergo treatment for various forms of cancer. Many times the children stay in the hospital and the house is a place for the parents and siblings to come back to in the evening and be around others going through the similar situations to their own.
We did meet one 8 year old boy who has had cancer since he was 4 years old. He has been having Chemo treatments for a while and had been in the hospital for 2 weeks straight. The dinner that we had cooked was the first meal outside of a hospital bed as well as the first real food that he had eaten in 2 weeks. The boy cleaned his plate. He also told me that he found out only hours earlier that he was cancer free and proceeded to show me all of the sharpie marks on his arms and legs that the radiologist had used to make sure that he was cancer free. They were his badge of honor.
If you ever need a pick me up, cook and serve dinner to a smiling 8 year old boy on the night he found out that his cancer is gone. I had a big smile on my face the rest of the evening and into Wednesday morning. Let’s never take for granted what’s most precious in life; our family, our friends, our community and life itself.