Every year since 1990, I usually chose to forget about AIDS, or for that matter, World AIDS Day… yet I am keenly aware all the time, but it is usually shoved to the deepest recesses of my mind.
We humans aspire to forget by pushing away the painful events and memories of our lives. But today, I will remember.
In 1989, I went to view the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt with my father, who was a volunteer. He had also planned on doing the candlelight march with Northern Lights Alternatives, a group he did a workshop with at that time. It was also one of the rare few times that the quilt had been displayed in its entirety in DC. Seeing the number of names and panels more than a decade ago was quite impressive, and I wondered to myself if I would have to make one of those for him one day as well. But I chose not to dwell on that… What I didn’t know, is that I was already well into the last year I was going to be spending with him. I never did make that panel in the end.
I don’t speak much about my father anymore… except for today. Speaking of the dead close to us makes for slightly stilted conversation sometimes for others. It is usually not in me to volunteer information, but I am honest when people ask, because he is now long dead; that chapter is now long closed. I can’t say that I have stopped wondering how things would have been different if he had lived much longer, but don’t we all wonder about things like that?
I’ve supported and contributed to AIDS charities in some minor and creative ways in the past, to remember him. But today, there is so much information out there and there are so are many international programmes out there supporting the cause. There are also people supporting AIDS through works of art (1/2), using the medium of the internet around the world, programmes promoting healthy outlets (1/2/3), and of course, we mustn’t forget the research involved…
The info is out there because we all have it…
