Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

Today will be my 4th year of attending Pride. Third in Houston and one crazy summer of Arkansas Pride.

This morning I watched a documentary called "Common Threads: Stories of the Quilt"

It was completely amazing. It was the 1989 winner of the best documentary oscar. The story tells of the rise of the Aids disease in the early 1980's and the struggles of getting the Reagan administration and the country to understand what the disease is. the United States was one of the last developed countries to start educating people on the disease; and that wasn't until 1987 when already over 50k people have died (more than that I can't remember the exact number at the moment). The stories told of those the quilt memorializes are those who contracted the disease through unprotected sex, needles, or blood transfusions.

The movie had me in tears and many scenes hit close to home. One woman, who ended up learning that she had become positive after her husbands passing, talked about the last time she saw her husband. He was in the hospital, not wanting to die in the family home, and the wife wasn't feel well. The nurse took her temperature and it was 105 degrees. The nurse said it would be best if she just stood at the door instead of getting any closer to her husband. She said her husband never turned to look at her, and he just sat there in the fetal position. That was the last time she got to see her husband. She never got to tell him goodbye.

I remember being in the third grade, going to a Houston for the Rodeo, and as a "before the rodeo trip" we went to the hospital to see my uncle Donnie who was in the hospital with "pneumonia". I walked into the hospital and from the door i can see him in the hospital bed hooked up to all these machines. The nurse told me that I could not go into the room, because i was too little and she thought i would unplug the machines (I was 8...not 4). So i didn't get to go into the hospital room. I didn't get to tell my Uncle Donnie (who i adored) good-bye or that I loved him. It wouldn't be till a couple of years later that i would learn that he past away of AIDS.

The mother of a 12 year old boy that had passed away started talking about how horrible it was that there were so many squares representing the horribly high number of people that had passed away from this disease. She said that each of these squares was made by someone that passed away and was loved.

I have so many emotions from this movie. One of those emotions is anger. I am so mad that my uncle doesn't have a quilt square. I'm mad that I was so young and that I only knew one side of my uncle that I couldn't even make a quilt square for him. I'm mad that none of his friends, partners, or lovers made one for him. I'm mad because in the documentary one man talks about meeting a guy in the doctor's office and they guy says that he no longer has friends because the disease took them all. I'm heartbroken at the thought of everyone that knew my Uncle Donnie in Houston could have died from this disease and I have no way of learning about him outside of the man that i remember. The man that would come and visit, play game after game of old maid with me, the man that brought me a porche, white convertible for my barbie.

I want so much to know this man and give him the respect that he deserves and that everyone deserves that has had to deal with this disease, and I just don't know how i'm going to do that....