How Are You, REALLY?

A few moments of peace today during a very rough day

What a day it was. My grandmother, my Nana, passed away today and I am utterly exhausted beyond imagination--both physically and mentally--but my brain is demanding that I write to help process things. The past two days, I spent as much time as my body would allow at the hospital with my family. I had to ride in a wheelchair and I was worried about how my family would react to that, because only a handful of people have seen me actually look sick. If I feel that bad, I don't usually go out.

Every week, when I would talk to my grandma on the phone, the first thing she would always ask me was how I was feeling. A few days ago, the last time that we spoke, she said something to me that has stood out in my mind. She asked me how I was feeling, and I auto-piloted, "I'm hanging in there." And she said, "Okay, Alyson...but, how are you, really?" With those four simple words, "how are you, really?" she called my bluff, she showed me just how much she truly cared about me, and she let me know she could handle the truth. That touched me so deeply at the time, and now I will always cherish that moment.

When you have a chronic illness and someone asks you how you are, it is an incredibly difficult question to answer. You have a split second to determine whether or not the person genuinely wants to know, and whether or not they can handle the truth if things aren't going well. What if, like my Nana, we all took the time to ask each other, "How are you, really?"