Sensing Light (35 page)

III

D
E
L
AVEAGA
D
ELL IN
Golden Gate Park was empty at dusk on the last Sunday of September. Two hundred volunteers had been there earlier in the day, weeding, clearing dead wood, and digging out brambles. Before leaving, they planted a dozen redwood saplings and placed an engraved bronze plaque at the base of each one.

Herb reached the dell as the sun was setting. He sat down by a plaque that read, “Kevin Bartholomew Memorial Tree.” Five minutes later, Gwen joined him.

“I brought tools,” she said and handed him a trowel from her bag.

They dug holes at the four cardinal points surrounding the slender trunk, taking care to shape curved, perpendicular walls, a trowel-length deep. When Herb finished, he leaned back on his elbows. In the distance, he recognized Katherine. He had met her at the wake after Kevin's funeral. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress. Her long auburn hair was lifted by a sea breeze. The pale freckles on her neck were just like Kevin's.

“There she is,” he said.

Gwen jumped up and shouted, “Here we are.”

The two women waved excitedly then stopped, simultaneously aware that gravitas was more appropriate at this moment. Both bit their lips to keep from laughing. They stared at each other in wonder over the identical sequence of their reactions. They had already spent hours talking since Katherine flew in from Boston. Gwen now felt she could tell her anything. The self-restraint she occasionally needed to exert with Nan and Rick, even with Kevin when he was alive, was unnecessary. Katherine had become the sister she never had.

After hugs, Katherine reached into her purse for a plastic bag. She emptied tiny portions of Kevin's ashes into each of the four holes. Gwen and Herb backfilled their excavations with loose earth and tamped it firm.

Katherine poured the remaining ashes into the trowels which Herb and Gwen held skyward. Another sea breeze arrived. They all watched as black swirls rose and disappeared into the twilight.

Afterword

There is no testimony that does not structurally imply in itself the possibility of fiction, simulacra, dissimulation, lie, and perjury—that is to say, the possibility of literature.

J
ACQUES
D
ERRIDA

F
ICTION AND
T
ESTIMONY

F
OR THOSE INTERESTED IN
learning more about how the AIDS epidemic unfolded in the 1980s, two excellent sources are
And The Band Played On
by Randy Shilts and
Virus
by Luc Montagnier.

The impetus for writing this book was the curiosity of my students and residents, as well as my children, Sarai and Mike, about the early days of the epidemic. I am deeply grateful to Ray Riegert, Leslie Henriques, and Jim Vaccaro for their steadfast encouragement and to Tom Jenks, Jennifer Walsh, Bonnie Carton, Edith Reisner-Newton, Jessica O'Dwyer, Jonas Jacobson, Susan Light, and Barbara Wright for their immensely helpful feedback. I'm indebted to the following family and friends for their suggestions and support: Ilona Frieden, Steven, Susan, Ann, and Craig Jacobson, Jesse Carton, Sarajo, Susan and Gabe Frieden, Lorraine and Anita Robinson, Hazel Becker, Felicia Liu, David Gary, Jeff Curtis, and Jim Chanin. Without the mentoring of John Mills, Merle Sande, Lowell Young, Paul Volberding, Connie Wofsy, and Donald Abrams, neither my career as an HIV clinician/researcher nor this book would have been possible. Lastly, I want to acknowledge Hopkins Stanley, Lawry Kaplan, Karena Franses, and the many other nurses, doctors, and social workers at San Francisco General Hospital who have been my role models for compassion.