A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

As Sunday evening rolled around, Woof decided to retire early...having had a very busy weekend...and eating an entire plate of cheese, crackers, and pepperoni when I left her unsupervised for about ten seconds. The rest of the household was glued to DOWNTON ABBEY on PBS. I missed the very first episode and thus was told "shh" every few minutes as I tried to figure out who was who. For some reason or other, my partner and I were expecting a Sherlock Holmes episode to follow, but we were both surprised when the next program was called " The Grove".....which is a little known National AIDS memorial in San Francisco. It was an interesting piece about how and why the memorial came to be, as well as the efforts to make it more familiar to people as a destination, and possibly erect a more "trumpeting" architectural statement.

The program got me to thinking about AIDS again....on how the epidemic wiped out a whole generation. There were so many artists and dancers and creative people who died right along with thousands of ordinary young people, and countless souls in underdeveloped countries. During the worst days of the disease I facilitated support groups for people with AIDS as well as groups for their families. Those were difficult times..filled with so much pain and loss for so many people. I probably had a dozen friends die from that awful disease, and remember crying the first time I saw the AIDS QUILT displayed in Washington...it was so enormous...and so personal, and the ages of the victims were so heartbreaking.

One of my very closest friends lived in LA. He was young and handsome and my whole family loved him. He got sick as did almost all of his friends, and three of us who originally met him in college went to see him for what we all knew would be the last time. I remember standing with him on the sidewalk in the warm California sun,,,,saying goodbye. When he'd come to visit me, I'd often come home from work and find him sitting on the cement bench in my garden....drinking a can of Coors. His ashes are there now, and sometimes on a sunny day I sit up there with a beer...my arm around Woof....and remember.