Delivering Care and Comfort
One certainly doesn’t hear many plaudits for chain stores, so learning that employees at the Home Goods and T.J. Maxx stores on the South Fork were “helpful and kind” when Daisy Dohanos and Nina Landi of North Haven approached them was positive news.
Ms. Dohanos, who has a background in health care and higher education, and Ms. Landi, a Sag Harbor kindergarten teacher, are buying and plan to deliver fleece blankets to hospice patients in time for Thanksgiving. They had been inspired to begin the project after buying several small blankets for their mother, Marlys Dohanos, who was a patient at the St. Francis Heart Center. She died last Christmas Eve.
The blankets added “a pop of color” to their mother’s bed, Ms. Dohanos said. “We’d take her fleeces and pillowcases that matched. We had all her favorite eye masks, her favorite shower gel. . . .”
“It gets to a point where you can’t make them cookies,” Ms. Landi said.
“A blanket is a universally comforting thing.”
The women set a goal of 225 blankets this year, in time for Thanksgiving, and have begun fund-raising. The average price is $19.99. Home Goods is letting them know when blankets, in three sizes, throw, twin, and bigger, arrive.
“We’re really going to reach our
goal this year, which is amazing,” Ms. Landi said.
The continuing needs of hospice patients are evidenced by the statistics. East End Hospice visits 100 residents regularly who have terminal illnesses and have chosen to remain at home. The Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue has eight beds, and St. Francis, in Roslyn, where their mother had surgery and died, has 38.
“We didn’t want to have blankets
with cheesy designs,” Ms. Landi said. “Home Goods is a corporate giant with small-town goodness. It is nice to see something that some people may have feared coming in become a partner in our community. That’s a really hopeful thing given all the empty windows, and it adds another layer of happiness to this project.”
Anyone who wishes to donate can do so via gofundme.com (Blankets for Hospice) or by sending a check to Blankets for Patients, P.O. Box 2652, Sag Harbor 11963.