A Pleasure

Last night we attended Spagio's Celebration of Wine, Food and Dining with the Stars presented by the Pleasure Guild of Nationwide Children's Hospital.  The event benefits the Pediatric Hospice and Palliative Care Program at NCH; Celia has been under their care for two years.

Caring for patients, especially young ones, with end-stage disease requires extreme sensitivity and extraordinary knowledge.  Cel’s hospice providers have delivered expert care, promoting our entire family’s quality of life.  (This is not our entire family, but we were thrilled to have a big group with us this year.)

Last night's menu included things like foie gras and shiitake pot-stickers, prosciutto wrapped shrimp, watercress soup with escargot, lemongrass poached lobster, ox tail burgers and hand-painted chocolates.  Our table's favorite wine (and we tried them all!) was a 2009 Orin Swift red blend called The Prisoner California.

We are grateful to the dedicated women of the Pleasure Guild, to the folks who bought tickets and who support families whose lives have been disturbed by loss, to the wine purveyors and to the sixteen world-renowned guest chefs who donated their time and talent.  And to Chef Hubert, a gentleman who comes across as the kind of person who’s more concerned with building relationships than reputation. (Although I'm fairly certain his reputation is top-notch.)

The event is spirited.  It's not a place where hope is thrown around like confetti, but donations flow almost as freely as drinks.  Hospice is not the kind of charity that can turn money into magic pixie dust, providers cannot offer patients treatments or cures, cannot prescribe parents a strong calm.  But Celie's nurses share a different kind of special power, the kind of compassion that makes tragedy a little easier to swallow and that soothes heartache for families like our own. And like others we met last night.

 JEB
* read about last year's dinner here