Blogathon

Jim

(Tissue alert)

Once, when I was in college, I worked for a campus program called SPARK. Mostly it was about alcohol and drug prevention, but it was a program run by the campus health center so we also did some safer sex stuff. December 1 was a Friday that year (1994). The theater I worked at was having a benefit performance of the show that was currently running. And on campus we did a whole bunch of stuff in partnership with the San Mateo County AIDS Project (SMCAP)- we had a table in the student center with AIDS awareness information, did some street outreach, and on Friday, World AIDS Day, we brought in a speaker to tell students what it was like to live with AIDS.

It was a day that changed my life profoundly. The speaker's name was Jim, and we never got to hear his story. He started to tell us about himself, and about his life, and then he trailed off, seeming to have lost his train of thought. Then in front of an assembly of 100 or so students, Jim had a seizure and lost conciousness. He had not regained conciousness by the time the ambulance arrived. I heard that he was admitted to the hospital, and that he had come out of it a few times, but for the most part stayed in his coma. After ten days or so, he stopped waking up and stayed in a coma for two more weeks, and then he died- on Christmas Eve. I wrote a piece on it for the student newspaper, that I'd post here if I could find it.

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"For I felt what I had not felt before
You'd swear those words could heal.
And as I looked up into those eyes
His vision borrows mine.
And I know he's no stranger,
For I feel I've held him for all of time."

Posted by Judy at July 29, 2006 11:03 PM