We all have our family traditions on Thanksgiving. There’s one at Metro Health that has endured for more than two decades.
After her son passed away 23 years ago from a brain tumor, Margie Colon was determined to turn something tragic into something wonderful.
Colon will have Thanksgiving around her own table, but only after she’s dropped off a hot, homemade turkey dinner for the Pediatric floor staff at Metro Health. She’s done this every Thanksgiving for the last 23 years.
Margie Colon lost her son to brain cancer 23 years ago. Every #Thanksgiving since, she has served a home-cooked meal to the staff at @metrohealthCLE's Pediatric Unit @WEWS pic.twitter.com/gU1Zzs6Ub8
— James Gherardi (@JamesGherardi) November 23, 2017
“Just like a mother, I had an intuition that something was wrong,” said Colon.
At 18 months, a brain tumor was discovered in Margie’s son Cesar – CC for short.
“We spent a lot of time here at Metro,” she said. “We did a total of almost five years here, on and off. Met a lot of other families, a lot of other kids, but there was something special about this place for us, as a family.”
CC passed away five years after his family adopted the Metro Health pediatric staff as their own; five years after seeing the same familiar faces every day.
“He showed me love, he showed me how to take nothing in life for granted,” she said.
Colon isn’t a stranger to helping others. This year, she helped raise 17 truckloads of supplies to send to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Thanksgiving is just one day, but for Colon, giving back is a part of who she is. The true meaning of Thanksgiving lives within her - someone who spends every day thankful.
“You take food in and it’s something that people can appreciate, it’s not just a gift that you can put on a shelf,” she said.
