It sounds like a coming together, a connection, like when an awareness expands your mind and brings clarity to many things.

Maybe if it was your way of self-comforting when you were little, then it was there in your head again because at that moment you needed some self-comforting about the global thought of people being cold-hearted and cruel and being unresponsive to another being in pain.

"How are you?" sounds like it was kind of a 'code' for "I am not okay." A kind of hidden plea from a child for someone to notice, to see and hear internal cries of pain, to respond.

Did you feel yesterday that T was seeing/hearing/responding to your pain at that moment in the way you wanted?