ROYAL OAK, Mich. – Last year, Beaumont Hospital tried something new for its children’s hospital patients. Aware of how isolating it can be for children to be stuck inside a hospital during the holidays, they started Moonbeams for Sweet Dreams.
The idea gave the little patients flashlights to wave out their windows for five minutes each night, in hopes that community members would come by with flashlights and wave back.
“We were really touched by how the community came out in force,” Beaumont’s Kathleen Grobbel said.
Moonbeams for Sweet Dreams runs every night in December.
It meant the world to 7-year-old Abigail Sherman, who ended up in the hospital after a seizure Christmas morning.
“I was waving my hands with the flashlight,” Abigail said. “I saw a man waving back at me, he was paying attention to me.”
Every move Abigail made, the man on the ground copied it with his flashlight. The little girl loved it.
So this year, now that Abigail is out of the hospital, she’ll be coming back to wave at the kids inside with her grandmother Jackie Lootens.
“To see the guy that was down there and he was copying every move she made, she just loved it,” according to Lootens.
Beaumont welcomes everybody to stop by.
The Moonbeams for Sweet Dreams runs every night in December from 8 p.m. to 8:05 p.m.
You can head over to beaumont.org to sign up. Signing up is not mandatory, but it does give the hospital an idea on how many people they need to help with traffic and parking cars.