Two Lives Too Many

Two Lives Too Many

Patricia Ernest (Pissed Off Patricia's Blog )

OpEdNews.com

 

 

 

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, Thursday, December 19, "The AIDS epidemic is a real weapon of mass destruction,"

 

No truer words were ever spoken.  Having witnessed the tragic, slow death caused by AIDS, not once but twice, I can attest that this is a disease that will destruct everyone it touches.  It's like a horrible monster that slowly consumes its victim.  You literally watch life being destroyed by this parasite.  If you think that watching someone being put to death in the electric chair or the gas chamber would be abhorrent, then please understand that watching someone die of AIDS is so much worse.

 

As I said, I have witnessed this twice.  One of the victims was a heterosexual female and the other was a homosexual male.  The young lady's name is one that many of you are familiar with, but out of respect for her, I will not expose her name here.  I will refer to her as B.   The male was a very dear friend, and I will refer to him as R.   I'll tell you about each of these wonderful people.   

 

Several years ago, I volunteered to organize the first beach clean-up in my county.  Honestly, I had no idea how to begin this project.  I started by getting the word out and putting my phone number in every media outlet.  I was asking for volunteers to meet on a given date to clean the trash off our beautiful shores.  The first volunteer to call me was B.   That was the day we met, via a phone call.  I was so excited that people were actually going to help me accomplish this daunting mission.  As it all worked out, we had lots of volunteers, and the beach clean-up was a true success.  The following year we did it all over again, and once again B was the first to call.  This time we had arranged a sort of beach party after the cleanup was completed, and that was where and when I truly got to know B.  After a casual friendship was established, we would run into one another often at local events.  Then one day, there was an article in the newspaper.  Unbelievably, B had contracted AIDS via a very minor medical procedure.  The news spread around the United States, because this was one of the first such cases where a patient had contracted AIDS.

  

The last time I spoke with B was over the phone.  She was too sick and too weak to actually speak.  She just made little sounds in response to my words.  That was our last conversation, because just a week or so later B was dead.  She went from a beautiful young woman to a corpse.  AIDS wrapped it's awful arms around her and squeezed away her beauty, her life, and basically the life of her family and friends as well.

 

I met the second person, R, when he was only about 6 years old.  I had found a dog that had been horribly injured and abused.  With my willingness to care for and keep the dog, and with the financial help of the Junior Division of our local Humane Society, our combined efforts resulted in the dog's survival.  To show my gratitude to all the kids for their help, I invited them all to my house to  have a little party and to introduce them to Lucky, the dog they had helped save.  There was this one little boy. He was just so kind and gentle with the dog.  He was very well behaved, and of all the kids there that day, I remembered him with such affection. 

 

Years went by, and R grew up.  As a young adult he became a local business owner.  He owned a pet shop, but not the kind that sells puppies and kittens.  His was a supply shop for pets.  Naturally I did all my shopping for my pet supplies at his store.  He would always remind me of our mutual rescue mission, and we would always speak about our happiness due to Lucky's amazing survival.  He never forgot about Lucky. 

 

More time passed and one evening I ran into R. at a local restaurant.  He was dining with another gentleman, and it was very obvious that they were a couple.  I was so proud of him for not hiding his social life, for being confident enough to live his true life. 

 

About two years passed before I saw R again.   By now his shop had grown into a large, well respected store.  Upon entering his store and seeing him, I knew something was wrong.  It surely was.  I was familiar with the monster's finger prints, I had seen it's damage once, and now I was seeing it again.  The monster had drawn a bead on another friend, and it was already showing it's presence.  There were the tell-tale signs.  I wanted to run up to R and rip this devilish monster away from him.  It was taking over his body, it was laughing in it's fiendish way as it sucked the life away from him.  I could see it peering out at me through his eyes.  I could see it's damned slimy arms plucking away the hair from his head.  You could almost hear it chuckle as it smiled and smirked and pinched away at his skin leaving those horrible splotches.  I wondered why the other customers didn't see what was happening right before their very eyes.  Didn't they hear that monster's laugh?  Didn't they hear it at all?  I made my purchases, but I really don't remember what I bought, because I was in such shock.  As I paid for the items, I looked into R's eyes, but I think the monster was so deeply embedded that I couldn't truly see the once kind and sweet eyes of  my friend.  I do remember that I hugged him and kissed his cheek.  I didn't ask him what was wrong and he didn't tell me, but that monster surely did.  The monster was yelling at me, and bragging about his latest victim.  It was howling with laughter as it ravished my friend.  The monster was gloating at my sadness,  It was gloating about it's most recent conquest.  That monster could do anything it wanted to.  No one was going to stop it.  It was gleeful and smirking as it was swallowing my friend alive.

 

 I would visit his shop about once every couple of weeks after that.  We no longer talked about Lucky  In fact, we no longer talked about much of anything.  R was drifting away from that life he and I had known.  It became a dread to visit with him, because it was like watching torture, and I was helpless to save him.  The last time I visited him he looked as though he had already died.  I could not believe he was still working, even part time, at the store.  When I walked in, he turned and looked at me, but there wasn't even a hint of his eyes anymore.  His body wasn't his, and even his voice wasn't his.  The monster had devoured him.  The indestructible monster had won.  What was left for it to consume?  I made my purchase and left knowing full well I would never see him again.  Sure enough the following week when I walked in, there was a new person running the shop and she said that R "would not be in".  Within a matter of days my friend was dead.  The monster had completed it's task, moved on, and left my friend's remains behind.  An empty, drained, infected shell was all that remained of that little boy that I had met so many years ago.  He was all gone. 

 

After the death of each of these people I cried a lot.  I think I cried, because I was glad they no longer had to suffer that awful life of dying.  It wasn't as though they had died the day that their heart stopped beating.  They died the day that AIDS firmly planted it's teeth into their life.  They died for a long time.

 

There are those who will say that R. knew the risks he was taking.  I would argue that due to the time when he contracted AIDS, he probably did not.  Neither B nor R deserved to suffer the way they did.  No one deserves AIDS.  If giving someone AIDS were to be considered as a type of  capital punishment, I am reasonably sure that it would be determined to be cruel and unusual.  It's just that hideous, it's just that awful.

 

Eight thousand people around the world die of AIDS each day.  On the separate days that my friends died, that would mean there were seven thousand nine hundred and ninety nine more victories for the monster.  Yes indeed, any time that eight thousand human beings die of one cause in one day, that cause is indeed a weapon of mass destruction.  But this doesn't occur on just one day, eight thousand people around the world die of AIDS everyday.  If any army from any country randomly killed that many human beings in one day, don't you think they would be considered terrorists?  Wouldn't a war be declared?  While we worry about chemical agents, and bombs, might we also worry even more about the spread of AIDS?  Do we?

 

As long as this monster is allowed to prowl the earth, as long as it may pick and choose it's victims, we are all at risk.  And, until the world's leaders  join together with determination, the monster will continue to wrap it's arms around people we love, and we will have to witness it's ravishing consumption of life.  The monster AIDS has no preferences, it has no true enemies, and it cannot be reasoned with.  This is the monster that other monsters fear.  So while we are busy with a war on terrorism, the monster is feeding on those we love.  It's time to get serious about this true weapon of mass destruction. 

 

It's time to fight a war against AIDS.  AIDS has already taken at least two lives too many.

 

patricia