By Jack Barton (soon to be a great-grandfather)
My story begins in late 2020 with a donation to the St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba (St. B – as I call it). St. B has been our “family” hospital
With births, deaths and all of life’s ailments in between. It was obvious any donation would go to St. B.
My wife had passed away in 2016 and our family made a donation to the St. B palliative care to buy two hospital lift chairs for the patients.
For this donation, we were advised palliative care did not have anything on their wish list. However, the NICU had a wish list for 44 of The Zaky HUGs for their premature babies. My second daughter said it would be a good idea. I recall replying “it would be better than good”.
Our family had suffered the heartbreak of my oldest daughter having lost a premature baby. Sara would have been 29 this year.
However, the amount of our planned donation would only cover about 10 of the Zaky Hugs. I said to my daughter “lets increase the donation and go for the works” with a smaller donation to palliative care.
The hospital ordered and received the 44 Zaky Hugs and they were well received with the director of the unit sending me a very nice thank you card and a Picture of a Zaky Hug on a baby. My heart melted. The picture sent to me shows the comfort given to the baby. Priceless.
Shortly after, I received the best news that I was going to be a first time great-grandpa. I sent a small message to Yamile at The Zaky about the donation to St. B and said “it looks like I will have to be ordering another one”. This grandpa is beyond happy. Yamile sent The Zaky HUG as a gift to my own family.
Thank you, The Zaky Family!