I am not usually one to make a big deal about my birthday, but this year I am turning 50 and I’m actually kind of excited about it. Which is a little weird considering how I handled my 40th Birthday. I was angry about turning 40. For at least four years. I started getting mad when I was around 38 years old, angry that I would be turning 40 soon and wishing there was something I could do to stop it. I didn’t get it over until I was at least 42. Maybe closer to 45. I know, it’s silly and childish to be angry over something so out of our control as getting older, but what can I say? I was not happy about it.
But now 50 is coming up in a few weeks, and to be honest, I’m ready to be done with my 40s. It has not been my best decade. Most people think I feel this way because of having been diagnosed with cancer two years ago, that having cancer makes one appreciate their life more, be thankful to still be alive, all of that. But honestly, cancer was just a small blimp in my 40s. It was scary for about 3 months, but then it was easy to move on. I haven’t claimed the “cancer survivor” status because it doesn’t feel like it fits. It’s not mine to claim. My diagnosis was so early and survival rates at that point are pretty much 100%, so I don’t think I actually survived anything. I just had these little bitty precancerous cells and I choose to go all radical and get a big surgery and now everything is fine. Well, mostly. I did have to get a small chunk of flesh taken off my arm a few weeks ago by my dermatologist to make sure I didn’t have skin cancer. Which I don’t have. I guess once you have one kind of cancer, all your doctors worry more about other kinds of cancer. So now I have to go see the dermatologist at least twice a year for screenings. Yay. But enough about cancer.
Today is May 1st. The beginning of my birthday month and I’m in the mood to write. I was born in 1969 and I’ve been reading a little recently about historical events that happened that year. Apparently, I was not born during a boring time in history! There was a lot happening in 1969 – Nixon, the Vietnam War, The Beatles, Woodstock, not to mention the space race was in high gear as the first man walked on the moon a few months after I was born. But the event I want to write about tonight happened on May 15, 1969. An american teenager named Robert died in St. Louis Missouri of a baffling medical condition. 15 years later, in 1984, it will be identified as the earliest known case of HIV/AIDS in north america. This fact stuck out to me as I was reading about 1969 because I just yesterday finished a book, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, that told the story of young gay men living in Chicago during the mid 1980s, as AIDS was spreading in the community, taking the lives of their friends and eventually, themselves. I loved this book so much and now I want to read all I can to learn more about the AIDS epidemic during the 80s.
I was a teenager during that time, graduating high school in 1987. I remember learning about HIV and AIDS in health classes each year and how the infomation was changing so rapidly as more research was done and a broader understanding was gained. It was a scary time, as AIDS deaths were increasing at an alarming rate, but it seemed like a far away problem, not something that was going to make it’s way to small town Kansas where I was growing up. Some of the people around me believed it was God’s punishment for homosexuals, but I didn’t really give it a lot of thought since I didn’t even know anyone who was gay. Or at least I wasn’t aware that I knew anyone who was gay. But fast forward several years to college. I was in Manhattan, sitting in a human ecology class at K-State and we had a special speaker come in to talk to us about AIDS. The speaker shared with us several stories of individuals she knew personally who had died of AIDS, including one story about a young man named Brian who was from Wichita. (I’m from Wichita – crazy! I didn’t know anyone in Wichita had AIDS!). As she shared this story, I slowly realized that I knew this Brian that she was talking about it. He had been my youth pastor during 7th and 8th grades. He was the one who kept encouraging me until I finally agreed to go to camp with the rest of the youth, he got me involved in youth group, and he was key person in building my faith. He left our church for another job after my 8th grade year and I didn’t keep in touch with him. I remembered that he had been engaged, but I heard later that they broke the engagement off. We all thought Brian had this incredible amount of self control because he and his fiance (I think her name was Gwen) had agreed that they would not have their first kiss until their wedding day. This started to make more sense now. I had heard through the grapevine that Brian had died within the last couple of years of some kind of lung disease but no one knew the details. I was sad because he had been an important part of my junior high years. Now I was realizing that Brian died of AIDS. Brian was gay. And we never knew.
Reading this book brought all of these memories back, made me think about Brian, about how I felt learning about AIDS in junior high and high school when it was this huge thing happening in our world. How incredible scary it must have been for those young men (and women, and children) who contracted the virus and knew they were going to die because there was no cure, no treatment at that time. It’s so different today. AIDS is no longer a death sentance and most people who contract the virus are able to receive treatment and live a long life.
I remember a couple of years ago when I started rewatching the television series ER over again from the beginning. It premiered in 1994 and ran for 15 seasons. I watched it when it first came on, but rewatching it now, I was really struck by how often the storylines revolved around HIV and AIDS. One of the main characters contracted the virus and it was a major story line through several seasons. The disease had only been around for about a decade when the show premiered. It was big news and it was everywhere. But now I’m almost 50. Brian died 30 years ago. So much has changed.
Show Me the Way 