Life

Thinking back 16 years...

If I had to describe life with one word, it would be experience. My whole life has been an endless array of experiences. I've been thinking a lot about my journey through life. I used to think that life was something that we had to endure. It was a series of very unfortunate and painful experiences that one had to go through. Along the way here and there, there would be a glimmer of happiness, if one was lucky. If not, you would have to endure the slings and arrows of life with the rest of us. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare described life thus:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Does life signify nothing? Perhaps it does. This world is full of misery and sadness. Nothing has really changed since Shakespeare wrote those words so long ago. That has been what most of my life has been. Does that mean that the first part of my life has been wasted with sadness? I used to think so and I used to be resentful of this damned world and our damned society. A good friend of mine who died years ago of AIDS told me "We have every right to hate society for what it has done to us." He was speaking from his point of view of how society hates what it does not understand. In his case, homosexuality and AIDS. It was 1987 and in the United States, AIDS was a "gay disease" in those days. Indeed, it started out even being called "GRID", or "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency". The name was later changed to AIDS. At the time he said that, I was hurting so bad from burying my friends who were dying all around me. He looked at me and said, "Bill, I love you. You can't come back here after you leave, because I won't be here. You have to live and promise that you will remember me." All I could do was to put my arms around his frail one hundred twenty-five pound body and whisper in his ear "I love you." I left shortly after, never to see him again. Life is funny that way. It's like a cruel joke. On the one hand, it tears your heart out at moments like that and makes you feel that there really is no hope. At the same time, somewhere you have the strength to say “I love you”, as though that might make a difference. It didn't. I still felt like giving up and my friend died feeling that no one in society at large gave a damn about him. He was absolutely right. No one did give a damn. He had AIDS. He was homosexual. No one cared about his plight. Now he is dead and I say, good for him! GOOD FOR HIM! He found peace and beat life at its' own game.

Ahead 16 years...

It has taken me a long time to not take life personally. Although people can sometimes be rotten, life does not discriminate. It plays with all of us equally. When you are in terrible pain, it's very difficult not to center on that pain. I used to think that I had more than my fair share. I blamed society and people for lack of understanding and compassion. In fact, that is true. Generally speaking, we as a human race are devoid of compassion or redemption. We seem to only feel better at the suffering of others, as though to say "thank God it's not me". If I remove myself from my world a bit and look upon life a bit more subjectively, is my suffering any worse than a mother who just lost her children? No, of course not. To her, the world is caving in and she has lost her family. That is tragic. The only thing that would make the tragedy worse is if she received no compassion or help from society, as though it were somehow her fault that her children are dead. That would be beyond tragic. That is how I felt when no one cared about us dying of AIDS.

Now, years later, I look back on time with a bit more objectivity. I see things from a different perspective now. I realize that life does not single people out. It can happen to any of us at anytime. On the flip side of life, there are events that happen every day that are blessings, if we choose to see them. The odd thing about life is that, when you look back on the years you have lived, the good and bad get blended together into a culmination of bittersweet memories that enrich your soul. That is the essence of life. I now realize that of all the people I have known, loved, and lost, that I was just lucky to have known them.

One of the most unforgettable memories that I have from those years was that of going on an AIDS march. We lived in the Castro neighborhood (San Francisco) in those days. A march from Castro Street to City Hall was to take place one cold October evening. It started out small but as we marched down Market Street towards City Hall, many joined us. By the time we got to City Hall, there were thousands of us. I was by myself that night in a crowd of thousands of strangers. Many had AIDS and were looking very bad. As the numbers of those who had died was read, and various speeches were being given, a feeling of doom came over me. I found myself getting low to the ground and crouching with my head down and my arms folded over my head. I just wanted it all to end. Then, I felt someone's hands on my shoulders who asked me to stand up. I did. He put his arms around me and held me tightly. I didn't even know who this was. I was crying and I said to him "Harvey said that we have to have hope, but he didn't know about this. There's no hope left." The friend who helped me up said to me "there is always hope, but you have to be strong and believe that someone cares." I turned towards the stage a brief moment and then turned around to say something to the one who had helped me, only to find he was gone, vanished. It was an eary feeling. I walked home that night. I wanted to be alone and to think. Could it be that hope wasn't dead? It was a confusing time. Shortly after that, we moved from San Francisco to New England. I knew that It was a pivotal moment in my life. I was leaving behind the one place where I was more free to be myself. At the same time, I was leaving behind horrible memories of sorrow. I felt as if I were leaving the City of Oz and venturing into the Black Forest? What would happen to us? The comfort I had was knowing that whatever happened, it couldn't be any worse than what we were leaving behind.

Present day...

So here I am, sixteen years later. During the writing of this, I have taken time to visit my old friends who I said goodbye to long ago. I have read their obituaries that now, with their age, have the smell of old used books. I have visited The Aids Quilt where many of them have memorial panels done in their memory. It seems like a lifetime ago, but I still remember the times we had together with every inflection still intact. That is my gift to them. I did not forget.

Today, my community has become so used to AIDS, it has become a way of life. We cope with it when we have to, and we help other human beings as we can, regardless of their background. Looking back on the past with resentment is what I call the "dark side", if you will. It helps no one and accomplishes nothing. The sad part of it is, we, as a society, never seem to learn much from lessons of the past. Here we are today, many of us trying to legitimize our relationships with marriage, and still being thought of and treated as second-class human beings. The real question is this: What is it in the human psyche that insists on degrading and demeaning others who aren't on a level playing field? This is exactly what causes wars, death and worst of all, apathy. When people stop caring and give up hope, what is left?

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of
infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams (Hamlet 2.2.258-60).