Write a Comment
11 Comments
This writing is truly a change and it is something very much familiar. Thanks for sharing a big part of reality. We should not be scared to talk about dying and preparing and showing care and love to each other. ????
Thanks, everyone, for sharing your own stories about your lived experience with mortality and your kind thoughts about this piece. I'm so glad you've seen something familiar in this. All my best, Mark.
Beautifully said.
Mark, This is a very insightful piece about what it's like to approach death the second time around. As you point out, those of us in the AIDS generation have learned something from our many brushes with mortality. I look on my ease of talking about death and dealing with the events that follow a loved one's death as a skill that I have honed over the decades. Thank you for sharing this essay. There are many of us, nodding with each of your statements.
Yes, bravo, Mark. Our society's general fear and denial of death can cause the dying and their families to make really poor and very expensive choices. And can rob us of a more whole experience of something we all--zero exceptions--will indeed do. Having faced death myself, I, too, was more death-friendly and able to help both my parents on their death journeys along with helping my siblings to go through it. We should start an org to help others do the same! WeAreAllGonnaDoIt.org? ;)
This column rings all too true in my life also. Losing my first partner & another who was my best friend in 1981 started my long education of the art of dying. I've also had more than a few occasions where doctors have told me to have my affairs in order... which I do. While we long term survivors have had to learn these lessons, many of those who were diagnosed after the mid 90's do not which is one more thing they can learn for those of us still around from the early days. big bear hug
Beautifully and thoughtfully written with the insight only a long time survivor would have knowledge of. TJ
Kevin Smith
Simple truths are priceless. I had the crap shoot luck to have the Delta 32 mutation. Simply can't get infected with HIV. This is recent knowledge, so for much of the 80"s ( I'm 61 ) I was just waiting to get sick. Never happened, but old age has. I am not upset about the obvious decline I'm in. It feels like a gift in a way, most of the wonderful men I knew from 40 years ago, are already gone. A couple have appeared to me in visions, telling me they are fine and I need not worry about dying.
May 5, 2017 • San Francisco