The day was finally here.
This day wouldn’t take the memories away, but if successful, it would remove the visible wounds.
I stared at my bookbag as if it were a foreign object. I couldn’t bring myself to pack it. Not because I couldn’t. Because doing so meant I’d have to process Monday.
Monday.
The dreaded day I would hand my husband back over to a medical team.
Again.
Something felt unsettling about calling anything “final” when you’ve already lived through the moment that almost wasn’t.
On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, he was almost taken from me. Not in a hypothetical, “that could have been bad” kind of way. In the kind of way that rearranges something in you without asking permission.
We were lucky, but we didn’t walk away without some souvenirs, reminders of life’s fragility.
Broken bones and permanent scars needed to be removed. Fixed. Reconstructed. Made to look more like before.
This surgery is supposed to be the last one.
The last procedure.
The last time I walk him into a building and let someone else take over.
The last time I sit in a waiting room pretending I have any control over the outcome.
The word “final” is supposed to feel like relief. Like a finish line. Like something we get to celebrate.
But sitting here, staring at a bag I still haven’t packed, it feels more like being asked to loosen my grip.
As long as there was another appointment, another procedure, another plan, I could convince myself I was doing something. Holding something together. Controlling at least a small piece of the outcome.
But this part? This requires something different.
Not control, but trust.
Not answers, but surrender.
And maybe that’s the real work all this time.
Not just getting him through surgery after surgery, but learning how to release what was never mine to hold so tightly in the first place.
If all goes well, the visible wounds will fade.
And in their place, something quieter but stronger remains: relief, perspective, and a renewed way of seeing what we’ve been given.
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