On Mother's Day, the Kensington Gardens team delivered roses and chocolates with messages from families to all residents.

Mother’s Day at Kensington Gardens is a holiday like no other. Usually, the buildings brim with families visiting their loved ones, carrying large bouquets of flowers, gifts, sweets and more. Then, the medley of visitors and residents come down for Mother’s Day brunch and are dazzled by performers hired to sweeten the experience. 

But with the novel coronavirus pandemic now entering its ninth week and with the strict no-visitor policy and physical distancing rules put in place to protect residents and staff, Kensington had to reimagine how we celebrate the day.

“We had to put our thinking caps on and try to capture the magic of the day somehow,” said Daisy Wong, Supervisor of Life Enhancement. “We couldn’t let Mother’s Day pass without a special treat for our residents.”

An idea came to Daisy: One day while she was coming into Kensington, she saw a family standing outside of the building, holding a lovely message written on it for a resident to see – something that happened quite often. 

“I thought why not deliver messages from families to all the residents on Mother’s Day?”

Daisy and the Kensington team organized and gathered gifts for all 350 residents: chocolates and roses. The team reached out to family members to ask if they wanted to include a message with these gifts, and they were blown away by the response! More than 100 messages of love were sent to mothers, fathers, spouses, siblings or friends living in the Gardens. 

The chocolates and roses brought many smiles to our residents’ faces.

“While this won’t replace the joy of coming in to visit, our aim is to give families the opportunity to be a part of this special day and connect during a time of physical distancing,” said Daisy. 

Early on Mother’s Day, the Kensington team, armed with buckets of roses and chocolates, began making the rounds at the Gardens ready to deliver the messages.

“We would come in and tell the resident that their loved one sent them a message and their faces lit up! It made us all pretty emotional,” said Daisy. “There was a real sense of joy in the hallways of the Gardens. I’m so grateful that our team was able to put a smile on our residents’ faces.”