How Are You Doing?
A question I couldn't answer honestly until grief taught me how
A really smart woman asked me this perfectly innocent question, back when I was still sitting by Lee’s bed in those last days.
It’s a simple question, really.
And I gave her the formula answer — “I’m good, I’ll be ok.”
It didn’t begin to scratch the surface. I had spent four years caring for my husband, who had Alzheimer’s. It had become a deeply painful stretch of my life, and in those final days I felt a mix of grief, and something that was close to relief, because he was, at last, transitioning.
But then, “I’m good” was all I could muster.
It took time to arrive at a full and truthful answer. It came gradually, and surprisingly, in pieces I didn’t expect. That doesn’t mean the conversation can’t start before you’re ready, though. Mine did, because the community I had built around me made room for it. Over the years and at different times, counselors, friends, family — they all played a part in helping me access, express, and release what I was carrying.
But then, in that moment — survive. Manage. Reach out. Cry.
A Better Conversation
I leaned on my friends as sounding boards in those weeks, testing my feelings out loud, watching for whether they landed as true. I knew it put weight on the people listening — there’s no playbook for a conversation like that. Those who stayed by me and listened — without comment, without judgment — seemed to know I just needed to talk through the finality of those days.
Gustavo Razetti writes that the best feedback givers aren’t the bluntest. They’re the most trusted. And that trust is built before the conversation even starts — by showing up as someone safe to be with, by asking permission rather than assuming it, by letting the other person know there will be no judgment waiting on the other side of what they say.
I needed that. Coffee, a glass of wine, sitting with me in my living room, no agenda — just space for the words to find their own way out, in their own time.
When my friend asked how I was doing, she wasn’t asking for the formula answer. She was asking me to finish the thought I kept cutting short. How does it feel to be losing your husband? I’d been losing him slowly, for years, but this final transition — the finality of it — was fierce.
I remember sitting with Lee in those final hours, watching images of our years together move through me like a reel — his decline, the small daily struggles, and underneath all of it, the years when he could still reach for me and find me there.
It’s true that, over time, the sharp edges of grief soften. But still…
Can We Talk About Anger?
The short answer, even now, is that I made my peace with this journey a while before he died. But peace and anger turned out to live in the same room.
I was angry that the disease took him. Angry that we didn’t get our years. Angry that I had to learn how to build a life without him in it.
Anger only goes so far, though. Eventually you have to decide what to do with it.
What I did — what I’m still doing — was simple, even if it didn’t feel simple at the time:
I survived the days that needed surviving, one foot in front of the other. I managed the business of death — Social Security, the banks, the attorney, the family who needed to be told, the celebration of life that needed planning. I reached out to my community, because the real conversation about how we’re doing only happens when there’s time to sit together, to feel safe enough to stay in it.
💡 I learned that there are those who will prey on the bereaved. Within 10 days of Lee’s passing, a bad actor tried to open a credit card account in his name. Someone poked the wrong bear (me) — I took care of things, quickly. But I learned, and want to pass on, the lesson. Make protecting financial identity a priority.
https://www.identitytheft.gov/
And I kept living. Work, travel, time with friends — not because grief asked me to perform normalcy, but because routine turned out to be load-bearing. Research backs up what I felt instinctively: maintaining structure while grieving gives an overwhelmed brain something to hold onto, reducing the cognitive weight grief demands while protecting the sleep and basic stability a person needs to keep functioning at all.
And I cried. Still do, when it comes. Anger too, sometimes. It’s a release valve, and I’ve earned the right to use it. And life goes on.
Vicki.