Op-Ed: Gratitude Didn’t Come Easy

My father was murdered when I was still young, a trauma that should have taught me something about loss, about the preciousness of life. But it didn’t—not fully. Life moved on, and for decades, it was good to me. I had a loving family, meaningful work, and the kind of stability that allows you to forget how fragile it all really is.

That illusion shattered in my early 50s when my wife was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

It wasn’t just a diagnosis. It was a slow-motion unraveling of the life we had built together—a life full of plans, private jokes, shared responsibilities. Over the next 14 years, we walked that path side by side, but not always in step. Anyone who has cared for someone with dementia knows this: you lose the person bit by bit, while still showing up every day for the version of them that remains.

Those years changed me. In many ways, they hollowed me out. But they also made space for something new to grow—a kind of gratitude I had never known before. Not the kind you feel when things go your way, but the kind that sneaks in through the cracks of heartbreak. Gratitude for the smallest signs of connection. For a calm afternoon. For the chance to be there for someone, even when they don’t always remember your name.

It was in those quiet, painful, often thankless moments that I began to understand gratitude as something deeper than a feeling. It became a practice. A survival tool. A way of honoring the love we still had, even as memory faded.

After my wife passed, I found myself not just grieving but transformed. I couldn’t go back to who I was before—because I no longer believed that life was about comfort or control. What mattered now was presence, service, and helping others navigate the kinds of losses I now knew intimately.

So, in this next chapter of my life—semi-retired, but fully engaged—I’ve committed myself to advocating for senior health and elder care. It’s not glamorous work, and it’s rarely easy. But it is essential. I show up because I know what’s at stake. Because I’ve lived on the other side of the statistics. And because the people I serve deserve not just dignity, but companionship.

Gratitude, I’ve learned, is not the absence of pain. It is what remains when we choose to see beauty through the pain. It’s not naïve or sentimental. Instead, it requires us to stay open-hearted in a world that gives us every reason to close down.

No one asks for hardship. I certainly didn’t. But I wouldn’t trade what I’ve learned. Because now, each morning that I wake up, each time I get to help someone feel seen and understood at a time where they feel incredibly isolated and alone, I am reminded that gratitude isn’t something you wait to feel. It’s something you choose to practice—especially when it’s hardest.