It's Hard To Explain

It was hard to explain, when people asked me what I did during those early years on the AIDS ward, especially when there were no successful treatments and AIDS was, truly, for most people, a death sentence.

I usually said I was one of the staff counselors and that would satisfy most.

But there were some who were more curious and really wanted to know what actually happened. Did I just walk into patient’s rooms and introduce myself to them and their visitors and then see what happened?

Yes, there was a lot of that.

Sometimes a nurse or doctor would tip me off that someone was especially upset or was asking for someone to talk to, but mostly it was washing my hands, taking a deep breath, letting it go, knocking on a door, and entering with my opening line.

“Hello . . . my name is Ed . . . I’m one of the counselors here.”

I had a friend who wanted to know what was difficult for me when I just suddenly appeared in people’s lives at such moments of crisis. I said it depended on who was in the room, and the room I’d just left, and my own emotions. I said there were times when I was asked questions that were difficult to answer.

“Do you have AIDS?”

“Why did this happen to me, my son, my brother, my father, my friend, my lover.”

“Am I going to die here?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Do you believe in God?”

I learned not to answer too quickly, that oftentimes the silence at the end of the question left room for something else to be said.

The hard part for me and, I think, for everybody else who worked there, was all the sadness that permeated every glance, every touch, every breath, every move. When it got to be too much, I’d go into the staff bathroom and lock the door and sit there quietly. A chalkboard hung there and people wrote random things on it.

Where to get the perfect latte, a movie to recommend, a bad knock-knock joke, a poem, a thank you card, an obituary.

Sometimes I just sat there and wept.