Around the time I got sick, my grandmother and my father told me at a family gathering how much my great-aunt, who died in the early 2000s, had enjoyed being ill herself. She was a frail, thin artist with a big smile who was often in bed when I visited her. I remember liking her very much, and I remember, too, that she had a habit of talking about her symptoms, musing about what was happening in her body. In the decade since her death, several of my aunts were diagnosed with autoimmune disorders, and it seems plausible that my great-aunt had had a genuine illness. But some in our family
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I highly doubt she enjoyed being sick
