World AIDS Day

I didn't actually know my colleague J all that well. But we were both part of a larger friend group at work, a bunch that hung out together at company events, went out for drinks after work, trekked into Central or Harvard Square for lunch, ended up at the same parties. And Peter, one of my closest friends at work - and still one of my closest friends period - was very friendly with J. 

This was in the late 1980's-early 1990's, at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. It was in the news. On everyone's mind - especially if you were gay. Everyone I knew read Randy Shilts' And The Band Played On, a seminal work on the spread of AIDS. A few years later, everyone I knew saw the movie based on the book. 

Famous people were dying: Rock Hudson, Liberace, Freddie Mercury. And Ryan White, a kid from Indiana. A hemophiliac who contracted AIDS through a life-saving transfusion. Ryan White. An innocent who became the poster child for innocents dying of AIDS. As if the gay men, the drug users, deserved to die...

While I certainly knew it had my gay friends a bit spooked, I didn't personally know anyone who had AIDS. 

Until J was diagnosed.

Shortly after, a support group having formed, my friend Peter advised J and his partner, L, that they should open up their support group (largely gay mail couples) and invite a few trusted (female) souls to join the team. And so, along with my other closest work friends Michele and Nanni, I became part of the support circle for J and L.

And so I got to see up close and personal just how devastation AIDS was. And got to know J (and L) very well.

At first, it wasn't all terrible-terrible. 

I was mostly used as a backup, running to CVS for a prescription, taking J to an appointment when no one else was around, dropping off a meal. 

J and L decided to have a commitment ceremony, which was very sweet and touching, especially as J's declining health hovered over it. 

The decline was awful to see.

As time wore on, things went the way AIDS things went. Bad to worse. 

Grotesque Kaposi sarcoma lesions. Tremendous weight loss in what was already a thin guy. Pneumonia. Psychosis. Dementia. 

Beyond awful. Well beyond.

But I got to know J and L, two wonderful, sweet, kind, decent men. (I even got to spend one Valentine's Day with J, at Peter's house, when L was out of town.)

And I also got to know J's amazing family.

J grew up in Puerto Rico, in a very conservative Catholic family. 

Now throw everything out the window that you ever heard about how conservative Catholic families from Puerto Rico treated their gay sons dying of AIDS

As J's life wore down, his parents moved to Boston to be near him. His brothers came to visit off and on, and one of his sisters-in-law left her young kids behind to stay in Boston with J's parents, as her English was better than that of J's folks. 

Part of my mission was hanging with J's parents and SIL when they needed a break from the hospital. I could definitely see where J got his sweetness, kindness, and decency. 

I got so spend some time with J the day before he died. He was in and out of lucidity, clearly in agony, covered with lesions - even on his beautiful face. Through it all, his piano-playing hands stayed beautiful, and it was an honor to hold and (very lightly) stroke those beautiful hands. 

For some reason - I think it was because I lived the closest to the hospital - I was the first person L called when J died at 4 a.m. He just wanted to talk to someone.

The service was lovely.

Fast forward, and the support group got together to do J's panel for the AIDS quilt. (The dynamics of this group, and how we finally - and it nearly took forever - figured out what to do has made for a very funny, oft-told story over the nearly thirty years since J died. If I ever write the story, it will be called The Quilting Bee.)

I haven't seen L in years. He remarried and moved away, but came back, with his husband, for my husband's memorial service in 2014. I keep up with him through our mutual friend Peter, so know he's doing well. 

I hadn't thought of J - or AIDS, for that matter - in a while. But today is World AIDS Day. The 35th anniversary of World AIDS Day, which was founded to raise awareness about this scourge. 

AIDS continues to kill about 1 million people a year, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. But there are still over 10,000 AIDS death in the US each year. 

The good news is that most people who develop HIV do not acquire full-blown AIDS, and there are 1.2 million Americans living with HIV. Which is why we don't hear as much about it as we did when our gay friends were dying left and right. 

May the progress continue. 

And here's to J's memory.