gone, not forgotten

I am participating in several World AIDS Day commemorations at the end of this week. I’m attending in the course of my job, but I’m glad to have the opportunity to reflect on all the deep complexity of HIV/AIDS and its impact on the world, and on my life.

It’s an issue way, way too deep and personal for me to even begin to unpack here at length. Having lived in San Francisco from the early 80s to the mid 90s, I was impacted in many, many ways.

Yes, I lost friends. Yes, the city was as horrifically affected as you may imagine. Yes, I lived under a heavy blanket of fear and grief for a long time.

When I was in my early 20s, my mother once mused that I was one of the lucky members of my family — because of my age, I was not (at that point) directly affected by a war. I told her if the devastation wrought by AIDS wasn’t a war, I didn’t know what was. Soldiers fell all day, every day.

Anyway. Let’s feast our eyes and ears upon one of our comrades, gone far too soon. We’ll always love you and your brothers and sisters, Sylvester!

[link]

Leave a Comment