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Top Ten

Wish List

Items

You can help make staying at the Ronald McDonald House easier for our families by donating items from our Wish List.

Granola Bars

Liquid Laundry
Detergent

Snack Items (Little

Debbie's, Individual Chips
and Pretzels)

Liquid Hand Soap

Dryer Sheets

Bottled Water

Pop Tarts

Cereal (Individual Servings)

Microwavable Meals

Dear Friend,

We would like to take this time to thank you for helping us provide comfort, care and support to more than 1,400 children and families in 2013.

It is because of you that we are able to provide a home-away-from-home for families like the Rays. Please take a moment to read the letter Marco Ray sent to the House after his family stayed here last month.

My daughter, Audrey Tova Ray, four months old, got a really bad case of RSV and had complicating bacterial infections at the same time the week before Christmas. She was lifelined from another city hospital the Saturday before Christmas as she experienced respiratory failure due to the infections. She arrived at Riley PICU on that Saturday night after the lifeline nurses administered an emergency sedation and breathing tube. In other words, Riley saved her life. She was stabilized in PICU and nursed back to health over the course of days. She was very sick, so it took time for her body to beat the RSV and for her to once again breathe on her own.

This letter of thanks is for the Ronald McDonald House, so allow me to tell you how indebted and grateful and, frankly, changed my family is due to your staff's love and compassion. I showed up at the house for the first time on the Sunday after Audrey was taken to Riley. Of course it would be an understatement to say that I was tired and stressed on Sunday. Saturday night, I had barely managed to get two hours of sleep while sitting next to my wife on a PICU couch as we sat in the room while the team helped Audrey.

Connie, in guest services, met me with a warm smile and a great deal of compassion when I arrived at the house. She explained to me how the house worked, but just as importantly, listened so well as I shared Audrey's story. As I toured the house, my eyes welled up again. The pantry full of food, the cookies on the tables, the countless Christmas decorations, the room just for our family sponsored by a generous local business. It all said one thing to me: Indianapolis loves your family.

What is so remarkable about the house is the way that it invites everyone to participate. The church that bakes the cookies is just as important to the family going through the healing of trauma as the corporate sponsor that provides the means to keep the doors open. Maybe another way to say this is that just as each family in the house is important, each family's story is sacred, each family's unique grief is incomparable and immeasurable, so is each company, church, family, and individual who volunteers. In other words, it takes a village to heal a whole family.

Thank you, Ronald McDonald House, thank you my community, my family of Indianapolis, for loving us so well. Thank you for giving us those basic but life-sustaining things that we all take for granted way too often: food, shelter, and a sense of grounding place when a storm rages all around. You have been that safe harbor for our family. When Audrey is all better, we will once again return to the house. We will join the fabric that has sustained us. We will share love and compassion with other families who are experiencing the trauma of having a sick child. Most importantly, we will give to those families the best of ourselves--our hearts, our souls, our ears.

With huge gratitude and humility,

Marco Ray