Scott
This is my story of my friend, Scott.
I see the medicine commercials on tv, people living with HIV whose viral levels are undetectable. A new life, literally exists now. A new generation is living without the terror and the grief we all suffered through. Prevention of HIV transmission and treatment are both currently available when years earlier, the diagnosis was a death sentence.
But the spirits of the souls who suffered and departed this world still cry out. It is now 30 years since my dear friend, Scott, died from AIDS. When we met in the Spanish language dorm in college, we spent hours getting to to know each other, laughed so hard, talked about our dream careers (we were both language geeks). He went on to become a government translator, never being able to share with me exactly what he was translating because I didn’t have appropriate security clearance. If he had told me, he would have had to kill me… or so the joke went.
I became an interpreter. We knew six languages between us, and dabbled in several others. Scott was one of the most loyal people I had ever met and he was often disappointed and hurt because many other people didn’t always have that trait. He was so dedicated to his family, loved them so much. He was a very devoted friend and partner, son, brother, uncle, employee. He served this country with his talents and dedication. He loved to travel and gratefully he got to travel a good amount in his short life. He lived first on the east coast and then on the west coast. I stayed in Chicago. He sat with me after I got the call that my dad had cancer and later, he comforted me when my father died. He embraced my husband like a brother and came and danced with me at my wedding. Little did we know that it would be our last joyous visit. I treasure the video we have of our dance.
A few years later, he shared his terrifying news. He was HIV positive. He fought so hard, trying to maintain his health and hold on. We talked often by phone and he met a wonderful new partner. Eventually like so many people at that time, his health deteriorated and I got the call. I flew out to be with him in the hospital. When I returned home, I knew it would not be too long and gradually life slipped away from my brother/my friend, Scott. So young and so talented and so in love with life. So much life yet unlived, robbed by the thief called “AIDS”. This was 1991.
How many of us still ache for them? Still cry at the grief and the loss, not only for the people we loved and still love, but because of the suffering and stigma they endured and the loss to the world of these loving, vibrant, intelligent and creative souls!? AIDS is a heartless thief. Now, it is preventable in locations where medicine is accessible and affordable, while it still rages in other parts of the world, taking life after life. In the West, we have smiling faces on posters in doctors’ offices and on tv commercials. When I see those images, I sometimes imagine Scott’s and others’ souls watching from afar. To those of us scarred by loss, we carry that emptiness of where their presence and love used to be. The AIDS Quilt squares are real people, real losses - not just something in a museum.
I walk through my life carrying my friend with me. The life he should still be living. We know how much courage the dead demonstrated while they lived and fought. We must continue to fight the inequities that make it possible for some societies to have smiling faces celebrating being “undetectable” due to their plentiful and accessible miracle drugs, and other societies where whole families die of AIDS due to no access. Scott would not look away and neither can I.
May they all rest in peace and may we all live with courage and honor them in memory and deed.
SHARED by Ellen
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