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Last week I found myself sitting in a hospital room with my wife. It was a routine colonoscopy, the kind of thing you do once you hit a certain age. Everybody does it, nothing to fret over.
Except I couldn't help feeling worried.
Being in a hospital room with my wife has almost never felt routine to me. Because seventeen years ago, sitting in a room that looked a lot like this one, I wasn't sure if my wife was going to live.
In your early 30s, you tend to feel indestructible. You're young, vibrant, healthy. You have no aches or pains yet. And you never even think about hearing the "C word". That's for people much older than you.
But after the second of two miscarriages, the doctors did a routine procedure to remove a cyst. And they found a lot more than we bargained for.
Those two babies that we never had probably saved my wife's life. Because the rare cancer that she was diagnosed with is usually undetectable -- until it's too late.
But because of the miscarriages, we went looking for answers. And what we found upended our lives.
For the next two years, it felt like we lived in hospitals. Procedures, surgeries, tests, scans, doctor consultations…they all became a fact of life.
Sometimes I wonder how we got through it all. How she got through it all.
For a long time after, I carried something in my nervous system that I never acknowledged. A tightness. A dread. A part of me that was always half-expecting bad news right around the corner.
And after a while, you get used to carrying something like that -- and you stop noticing the weight of it. It just becomes part of you.
Luckily, after 10 years and multiple surgeries and procedures and scans, she was declared "cancer free". We could finally put that weight down. What a relief that was.
So there I was last week, back in a room with the same beeping and the same gowns, waiting for a doctor to walk through the door with a folder. And I went right back to that 30-something self. That old tightness. That old worry.
And when the doctor walked in, he reported a clean bill of health. Nothing to worry about, just like we'd been told from the start.
We walked out to the car and I sat there for a moment. And what hit me was more than just relief. It was the weight I'd carried for the last two hours. A weight I hadn't carried in years. But walking back into that room, I felt it all over again. The fragility. The complete lack of control. And walking out, I noticed how long it had been gone.
And I realized something. That when it comes to gratitude, I tend to fall into a trap. Maybe you do too. I usually treat it like an inventory of the things I have: health, family, a roof over our heads. All true, and worth naming.
But what I almost always miss is the gratitude for what I'm no longer carrying. That constant pit that never left my stomach. Or the years I spent worrying about a loss that never came. I put those down, thankfully, many years ago. What surprised me is how quickly it can all come flooding back. The mind may forget, but the body does not.
So here's what may be a different way to think about gratitude -- what is it you used to carry that you don't anymore? Maybe a fear, or a grudge that you no longer live with or think about. A part of yourself that you used to have to manage, and is no longer needed.
That's the gratitude I always forget to practice. And sometimes it's nice to be reminded of the lightness — and of what no longer weighs me down.
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