World AIDS Day 2009 and Christopher James Harris

December 1st is World AIDS Day 2009. Tonight I am going to attend our local AIDS Benefit Foundation fundraiser. I will wear a pretty dress, pin on the ceramic red ribbon my nephew gave me many years ago and I will see some old friends of Christopher James Harris.

We lost Christopher, at the age of 32, in the spring of 1996. During those first six months of that year there were over 22,000 deaths from AIDS related illnesses. At that time, the worldwide death count was more than 1.5 million since HIV/AIDS was first identified in 1981. Chris' death was the first of many AIDS deaths that I witnessed up close and personal.

I can still remember wheeling Chris into the emergency room for the first hospitalization of many to come. It was 1992. Chris was my nephew and godson. He was tall, blond, tanned and beautiful. He was one of my closest friends. Chris lived with me during the four years he battled the AIDS virus. It was a brutal fight. And fought we did.

Chris quietly came "out of the closet" in the late '80s. I say "quietly" because he and many of his friends, while "out" had yet to turn the light on. The masses of the uninformed still believed that you could contract AIDS from just being around a gay man. Actually, Chris often cringed and cautioned me to wear gloves when I was helping him cope with an episode. I never even thought of "catching" AIDS; I just wanted to comfort him, make him better and help him laugh.

The day he was diagnosed I ran to the bookstore and bought every book there was on AIDS. There were only five in the store and the clerk gave me a frightened look as he rang up my purchase. In the hospital, Chris was hiding the books in the drawer when people came to visit. "We can't tell them", he would say. I said, "we have to tell them." We had to turn the lights on!

During the next four years, Chris and I went back and forth to Providence Hospital. Providence was the only hospital in the area at that time that would take AIDS patients. I would bring picnic baskets of his favorite foods to help him gain some weight. I would hold the pan in front of him as he got sick from the mega drugs being pumped into him. We would fight over what we would and would not tell the rest of the family. He didn't want them to know how much he was suffering. He was a wonderful actor; he hid his pain and fear well.

We talked openly about the disease, his life and his impending death. For in those days, AIDS was indeed a death sentence; a short duration from diagnoses to the end. I was told, by his doctor, at his funeral, that Chris had four years more than he would have had without me. I hold on to those words to this day. I wanted so to save that wonderful young man; that sweet young boy who once told me he wanted to be a pilot so he could travel with me around the world.

A day does not go by that I don't think of him. He made the best cup of coffee and there are days that I wish he was still here to do so. We laughed in the face of adversity. We laughed privately as we recounted the reaction some people had when they learned that he was gay and ill.

I think of him everyday. On December 1st, would you think of him too; and say a prayer. Say a prayer for Chris and all of the 33.2 million men, women and children who live with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

I miss him. His family and friends miss him; and there are his nieces and cousins who have "missed" knowing him.