A Volunteer Story of HIV, part 1

In 1991, my life was forever changed by a fast and tragic series of events. First was the birth and death of my baby brother. He came home for 3 weeks and then for reasons unknown to me, had to go back to the hospital. He passed at three months old. Then my mother told me she wouldn’t be alive much longer. She and my father were HIV-positive. At the time, I didn’t even know what HIV was.  

Shortly after that talk, my mother passed. My family was split up between my father and a family friend. That situation was short lived for a variety of reasons, so all my siblings and I were returned to our sick and dying father.  

As a 12-year-old, I watched my father’s body and spirit be overcome by HIV and then AIDS. In the end, I am not sure if it was the AIDS or the guilt that took him. My dad was a hemophiliac; he spent his youth in hospitals receiving blood transfusions. As science evolved, he was able to do his own transfusions at home. He was saving his own life with other people’s blood. That is how HIV entered our family. It took his wife, his youngest son, and him. How could he not feel guilty? How could he fight that mental battle alone? How could he have hope? My father gave into the effects of AIDS on December 23, 1994.

Watch for part 2 of Jill’s story coming soon.