Friends–
This is a guest post, from our Friend John Calvi. John, for those who don’t know, is a Quaker massage therapist and healer who lives in Vermont. John has many interests and concerns, but here he speaks about his journey with and through the AIDS crisis, on the occasion of World AIDS Day.
John originally sent this to a LGBT Quaker list, and it’s reproduced here with his kind permission. The embellishments (links, etc.) are mine.
recollections
All day I’ve felt a bit sad. I’ve been remembering the arc of AIDS in my life, what I usually think of as the AIDS WARS.
I remember hearing a little something in August of 83, an article in Time magazine perhaps, about gay men getting cancer in San Francisco and New York. I was teaching in a summer camp and quite isolated.
But when I returned to massage school in Boulder, Colorado, I began to learn more and seek out more information.
I remember in October going to an informational meeting by the Colorado department of health and learning what little information they had.
Maybe it was a virus. AIDS as a word had not yet happened. No one was sure yet how it was spread but probably by body fluids. Not sure about kissing, except gay men kiss their grandmothers and grannies did not seem to have AIDS, the doctor said.
I called that doctor soon and offered to give massage to anyone in Colorado with AIDS whether or not they could pay.
Fortunately, the numbers were still in the single digits and I did massage on 4 people very soon. 3 became long term clients. 2 were dead in a few years.
Many more were diagnosed and died quickly as we had so little understanding of the new diseases and none of the existing medicines worked.
Back in Vermont in 85 I taught AIDS 101 at Quaker meetings and in NY prisons. I became part of the Vermont People with AIDS Coalition and did tons of massage and teaching there. In 86 my best friend got swollen lymph nodes and though he wouldn’t die for several years, my heart began to break.
I met [my husband] Marshall and moved to Los Angeles, began to teach with AIDS, Medicine, and Miracles and did massage with Michael Callen over the years. And then we moved to Washington DC where John Meyer got me hooked up with AIDS services and I was hands-on in several hospitals, teaching buddy teams, and just beginning work with tortured refugees for a change of pace- it was good to work with people who were not dying.
About this time, my best friend began to be seriously ill. And that long vigil of support and saying good-bye began. More friends became ill. Any illness I felt was terrifying. I was now deeply in love and married in all senses but the legal one and feared greatly that one of us would become ill and we’d be among the many sinking low and disappearing and then part of the great flood of memorials. I was doing grieving circles at night at Friends General Conference because there was a need from more grieving than usual life allowed and these circles were crowded with amazing stories and so many people.
When we moved back to Vermont, I was relieved of doing regular hospital visits and the density of memorials. But became part of the rural work of education and service. Bill Kreidler, my best friend, began a decline slowly. He would have a rally and stay strong for a bit. And then some other infection would bring him low again and his true love did an amazing job of care, beyond what I could do, I am sure.
And by the time Bill died I was nearly numb to the great pain of the world in this pandemic. It had become my coming of age in my early 30’s and now had squashed my heart and hope almost two decades later. I still teach about AIDS when I’m invited. And I still lay hands on people with AIDS as a massage therapist and energy worker. And a couple of friends, still living, are among the very first people diagnosed in NYC in the very early 80’s.
Recently I worked with a young doctor from Rwanda whose life work has become pediatric AIDS in a children’s hospital. He told me he felt numb and had no emotions left. We discussed avoiding burnout, the advanced form. And we did some hands-on work that felt full of Light and well guided from on high.
He told me that in Rwanda he had not seen the worst. I was afraid to ask what that meant in Rwandan terms.
And this summer I’ll return to an AIDS conference I have been teaching at for more than 20 years. I’ll see old dear ones and laugh and clap my hands as I walk to them calling out in a loud voice Oh For God’s Sake, Are You Still Alive?! And we’ll hug and laugh to still be here, still be doing the work, still be grateful for so many things.
And I’ll talk quietly with the newly diagnosed- young girls and boys and some grandmothers – and find some ways to help them relax and maybe to laugh and maybe dare to hope that as bad as the news is, they can still do life and do it in a big way with this new family as an anchor.
I am so honored and exhausted and proud of what we’ve survived. I can’t imagine a life without this education that I never signed up for. And I’m so happy to have learned how to get up each day and work in hell and that to go in smiling created the best chance to carry Light as far into those dank corners as possible.
I still miss Bill Kreidler, especially on this day, and listen to his speeches on tape and get teary. But I remember his living more than his dying and his laughter more than his tears. I was so dearly looking forward to getting old with him. Now, I just remember how it felt to be with him and when I see some handsome man walking down the beach, some part of me smiling inside says – hey Bill, look at that
It’s life itself that draws us on, that bright Light and hope that we’ll see how lovely life is.
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Thanks for publishing this. Almost twenty years ago, when my first child was still a toddler, my uncle lived with for a few months. His friend Greg, who had been his lover for many years when I was too young to understand what their friendship entailed, was dying from AIDS.
Near the end of his life, my uncle brought Greg to our home for a visit, and I will never forget the torrent of emotion that poured from Greg when my small daughter walked into the room and crawled up into his lap. I think Greg expected me, as a new and over protective parent, to quickly whisk her away from him – to react out of fear and ignorance like so many people would have back then, and unfortunately still do today.
Thanks for this.
It is really a great pain for me to have experienced a great dying, without the knowledge of my quaker friends around me. It’s not that I wanted us all to feel this pain, but I have been so lonely at meetings with all the death, all the pain I live with still and most people never even knew it was happening.
I am so angry, bitter and frustrated, not by us, never that, but by the great unknowing everywhere. Sometimes I forget why I am so angry and bitter and blame myself for the having that great american sin of negativity, and then I remember, remember and remember.
love ben