Sunday, May 30, 2010 - that's a day I saw the AIDS Memorial Quilt panel with my brother's name on it. I stood inches from the panel, just feet from his name, carefully stenciled in white letters on a blue background. There were a couple of dozen names on that panel, and it was one of 22 nearly identical panels laid out on the floor of the ballroom at the downtown hotel where the International Gay Bowling Organization (IGBO) was holding its annual tournament and conference. Sixteen years after his death, and countless hours spent wondering if any of his gay friends, or HIV+ friends had ever made him a panel, I finally knew. There's no solitary panel for him, but he is remembered with friends and fellow bowlers as a beloved member of a community that refuses to act like AIDS is over; that refuses to forget; that keeps on loving and celebrating life even in the face of loss.
As I prepared the AIDS Memorial Service for that afternoon, I had my moments of sadness for Ken and the MCC folks I've known over the years who have lived with HIV and have died of AIDS related complications. But when it came right down to it, standing there at the panel, it wasn't so bad. I really have made my peace with his death, and I am free to rejoice in the life he lived. What a gift!
What hit me was standing back and looking at all twenty-two panels. Name, after name, after name. There is a great cloud of witnesses around us and their deaths have impacted us deeply. My prayer is that we heal the loss enough to celebrate what their lives gave us; how their lives impacted us; how their lives "complicated" ours in wonderful and amazing ways. If all we ever feel is the sorrow of their deaths, then maybe their lives were lived in vain.
As I looked over the heads of those gathered for the service, I realized that we really can see it as so much loss, or so much love. We can choose, and it's our choosing that either moves us toward greater healing or leaves us stranded in sorrow. We can see the enormity of the loss and shake our heads in bewildered confusion at the senselessness of young lives lost at the peak of their creativity and vision and energy, or we can see the amazing impact these individuals had and know that the world is a better place for their having been in it! After all, "the only measure of our words and our deeds will be the love we leave behind when we're gone." The sting of death is realizing there will be no more hugs, or romantic dinners, or walks on the beach, or whatever it was we shared special with our loved ones. And that's true, and that's why it stings. Still, it's also true that nothing can separate us from the love they've left behind. It lives in us. So we remember, and we tell stories, and we make quilt panels, and we make sure the love lives on by paying it forward on their behalf.
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