It is December. And it is Tuesday. So I guess it’s time for T-SQL Tuesday again. Our host this month is Kay Sauter, and his seasonally inspired topic is to call out the gratitude that we often feel towards other, but fail to express.

This is a very easy task for me. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you will know that, during the last year, my focus was more on being ill and getting better than on dissecting execution plans (although I never really fully stopped doing the latter 😉).

During all that time, the support from the Data Platform community has been overwhelming. From the moment I decided to make my illness public, I was swamped by so many positive reactions. That has been truly heartwarming. One moment in specific that I really want to call out was during the 2022 Pass Data Community Summit. During one of the keynotes, a video was shown, about me, my role in the community, and my leukemia. And about the support directly from the community, by people wearing TeamHugo shirts, or tweeting their support with the #TeamHugo hashtag, or donating to the Leukemai Research Foundation, or registering as a bone marrow donor.

I was in hospital, when my phone went wild with notifications of people wishing me the best. Some included a link to that video. And to another video, that showed the standing ovation in the room, and the sea of #TeamHugo shirts.

I was completely teary eyed at that time. Heck, I am teary eyed again just now, thinking back of that moment. That support, from so many people in the community. From people I have spoken with before, from friends, but also from people I didn’t even know, but who knew me and wanted to wish me the best. That support was truly awesome.

So thank you. To Rie Merritt, for creating that video. To Erin Stellato and Ben Weissman for organizing the #TeamHugo action. And most of all, to everyone in this awesome community for your great support.

Of course, I also want to say thank you, a huge thank you, to my amazing family. To my wife, who was with me all the time, cared to all my needs, both when I was home and too weak to do anything myself, as well as when I was in hospital, and she visited daily, made sure I had better food then what the hospital provided. And to my two amazing children, who visited whenever they could, supported both me and my wife, and just did whatever they could do to carry my wife and me through the process.

Thanks, Kay, for picking this theme to trigger me to explicitly express the gratitude I feel, but usually forget to express.