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Thanksgiving Reflections: Gratitude and the Tiny Fish Tank
In 2018, I spent Thanksgiving in a hospital.
It didn’t smell like turkey. It smelled like antiseptic, the kind that stings your nose and clings to your skin, mixed with the faint metallic tang of the machines that beeped all day and night. The quiet wasn’t peaceful; it was a strange, hollow quiet, like when you’re the only person awake in the middle of the night. Except, I wasn’t awake by choice—I was just stuck.
Thanksgiving had always been loud and chaotic growing up. I come from two big families—my mom’s side, my dad’s side—and every holiday was a shuffle. Whose house got dinner this year? Which house got dessert? Who had leftovers for breakfast? It was messy and noisy, full of too many people crammed into one room, always a table for eight seating 20.
But that year, there was no shuffle. No turkey. No too-loud conversations about football or politics. Just me, my wheelchair, my hospital bed, and the fluorescent lights overhead. Visiting hours ended, the halls emptied out, and it was just… quiet.
I remember thinking, This doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving. It doesn’t feel like anything at all.
Thanksgiving in the Groundhog Day Cycle
Holidays have a way of amplifying whatever is happening in your life. If life is good, they feel like magic. But when life is hard, they’re like a giant mirror reflecting all the cracks you’re trying not to look at.
That Thanksgiving, I didn’t feel grateful. I didn’t feel festive. I didn’t feel like myself at all. My body wasn’t mine anymore—it belonged to the hospital, the doctors, the machines, the medication schedules. The day didn’t feel special; it just felt like another one in a long string of same shit, different day.
The worst part wasn’t even the loneliness, though that was bad. It was the hollow feeling of watching the world go on without me.
The Tiny Things That Meant Everything
But here’s the thing about being stuck in a place like that: even the tiniest moments feel like a big deal.
The best thing that happened to me that Thanksgiving wasn’t a meal or a visitor. It was getting to leave my hospital floor. For weeks, I’d been confined to that one sterile beeping hallway, those same walls that seemed to close in a little more every day. But on Thanksgiving, I got to go downstairs.
It wasn’t much—a short ride in my wheelchair to the hospital lobby. But for me, it was everything. The lobby was like another world. There was a big fish tank there. It wasn’t a glowing centerpiece but full of little fish darting back and forth. I sat there watching them, completely mesmerized like I’d forgotten what it was like to see something alive that wasn’t tied to machines, charts, or routines.
And then there was the tiny courtyard, a sliver of the outside world. It wasn’t pretty—just a patch of concrete with a few tired plants—but I could feel the air on my face. Real air. Not the recycled, suffocating stuff from the hospital vents. I sat there for as long as they’d let me, staring at the sky and listening to the muffled sounds of the world beyond the hospital doors.
Those moments shouldn’t have mattered as much as they did. A fish tank. A patch of concrete. A sky that looked the same as it always did. But to me, they were everything.
The Nurse Who Stayed
Then there was the nurse. She wasn’t particularly warm or chatty, but she lingered. Just for a minute, during her rounds.
It’s hard to explain how much that meant to me. Nurses have this way of looking like they care but also not, like they’re listening to you but also just listening for your chart. But for a few minutes, it felt like she saw me, not as a patient, not as vitals to be checked, but as a person.
And I broke. Not in some big, dramatic way—just in a quiet, small way, the kind of breaking you don’t even realize is happening until it’s over.
I told her, I’m not okay. I’m not happy. I’m not accepting any of this. And she just nodded, like that was the most normal thing to say in the world.
She didn’t try to fix it or make me feel better. She didn’t tell me I’d be fine or that things would get easier. She just stood there for a moment, holding the space for me to be not okay.
That moment didn’t change my life, but it gave me something I hadn’t had in weeks: a release. A tiny crack in the Groundhog Day cycle.
Gratitude in Tiny, Messy Moments
People talk about gratitude like it’s some big, shiny thing. Like it lives in the grand gestures or the perfect moments. But that year, I learned that gratitude doesn’t always look the way you expect.
For me, it wasn’t the holiday dinner or the laughter around the table. It was sunlight streaming through a hospital window. It was the beep of a machine finally silencing after hours of noise. It was the nurse who lingered just long enough for me to feel seen.
And it was the fish tank.
Now, years later, I still think about that fish tank. I think about how much I hated it and loved it at the same time. How it wasn’t anything special, but it gave me something to hold onto when I felt like I had nothing.
That’s the thing about gratitude—it sneaks up on you. It doesn’t need a holiday or a perfectly set table. Sometimes, it’s just about finding one small thing to hold onto.
This Year Feels Different
This year, I’m not sitting in a hospital room. I’m walking. I’m breathing. I’m choosing how I spend my Thanksgiving. And you know what? I’m not trying to make it perfect.
I’m not worried about the food or the decorations or the schedule. I’m not trying to be anything other than who I am, right here, right now. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that gratitude doesn’t need a holiday.
Thanksgiving in a hospital taught me a lot of things. It taught me that the world doesn’t stop when you do. It taught me how to hold on to small, fleeting moments when the big ones don’t exist.
Gratitude lives in the quiet moments—the ones we usually overlook. It doesn’t live in a perfectly set table or a room full of people. It lives in the tiniest cracks of your day. In the sunlight, the fish tanks, and the nurses who linger.
Gratitude doesn’t need to be big to matter. Sometimes, it’s just enough to remind you that you’re still here.
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