From: Sam Damon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 18:09:35 -0400 (edt)

THE WORD WE CANNOT SPEAK   by Beth Arnold
(Special Reports Mar/Apr 94, "Private Lives" pp 11-12)

"When She Loses Her Brother To AIDS, Our Writer Struggles With Her Mother's
Public Denial."

I sat in my mother's living room in Batesville, Arkansas, on Thanksgiving
two years ago.  I was trying to have an adult conversation with her, and
instead of losing my grip when she missed the point of our discussion -- so
often my modus operandi -- I now wanted to reason with her.  The subject was
too important to screw up: we were planning for my brother's funeral on the
following day.

Brent had died at age 34 in New York City only 48 hours before.  He and I
were to have been the hosts for a gala Thanksgiving dinner at his loft. 
Instead, I held his hand while he died of AIDS.  Officially, Burkitt's
lymphoma is what killed him, but he had it because he had AIDS.  Brent loved
Thanksgiving and parties, so we all thought he'd make it through the
holiday.  When he died early, it was a shock.

As anyone who's lost a true loved one knows, the pain jammed into a speck of
flesh and bones feels as big as the universe.  It consumed me, almost
smothered me.  Brent was more than my brother; he was my best friend.  We
were so close -- he was like the air I breathe.  I needed him and his
unconditional love.

My brother was gay.  I say that flatly and pointedly, and without apology. 
I was proud that he was my brother, and proud of the way he lived his life. 
And I was fierce in my protection of Brent when anyone made thoughtless,
mean, or cruel comments about people like him -- that sort of thing happened
a lot in the part of the country we came from.

Brent had lived with the virus for about five years, so all his friends and
family had been through the classic patterns of coping with disease.  We
started to be scared that he'd die immediately, then, in a complete reversal,
imagined he could live indefinitely, at least until a cure was found.  Then,
when he contracted the aggressive and life-threatening lymphoma, we were
terrified.  But always we prayed for a miracle -- they do happen, after all. 
Only at the end could we face the real trauma of his death.

It was almost impossible for me to conceive of Brent's dying; he always
lived so fully.  Even as a little boy he would stop to examine a jonquil,
appreciating its beauty.  As a preteen from a small town, he wangled an
invitation to Little Rock's cotillion series; even then he aspired to more
than baseball or duck hunting.  As a Boy Scout, he went to Japan for an
international jamboree, which was the first of many trips abroad.

He was born to explore the sophisticated salons of Europe, and he did.  He
graduated from Yale and went on to become a successful decorator (writer
David Halberstam once called him "the talent of his generation").  Brent was
like Cary Grant -- handsome, charming, and witty, with impeccable taste.  He
was generous of spirit and was caring and giving to his friends.

But now he was gone, and I wanted us to face his death with the same courage
and strength with which he'd lived his life.  I wanted to include in the
funeral program a paragraph requesting that memorials be made to the
Arkansas AIDS Foundation.  Brent would've liked that.  He'd donated his time
and money to the American Foundation for AIDS Research.  He never made a
secret of his illness.

But that was in New York, and this was Arkansas.  Here, the very thought of
a public admission was a problem.  I wasn't surprised though; I'd seen it
before.

Eight months earlier, my husband and I had driven to a friend's funeral in a
little town in Alabama.  He was a writer, like us, and he had AIDS.  We had
enjoyed a couple of meals with him and his companion during a trip to New
Orleans only a month before he died.  He'd looked like a walking skeleton
then, and when I came down with an illness during the trip, he offered me
relief from the arsenal of drugs in his medicine chest.  AIDS patients have
a pill for everything.

Before we drove to the graveside service, I whispered to his mother that
although I couldn't understand the pain of her loss exactly, I certainly had
strong feelings because my brother also had the disease.  She looked at me
and, taking my arm, patted me and said, "You know, no one here knows about
my son."

I understood that in Southern lady lingo this meant, "Don't breathe a word
to anyone about it." I was shocked, but I smiled my own bittersweet Southern
smile.  The notion that no one knew about this man's illness was absurd.  He
had written about it in a national magazine and had been interviewed about
it on national TV.  The funeral ceremony itself was one of the saddest
events I've ever attended.  The most personal statement made about him was
that he had been a writer.  Beyond that, there was nothing.  They read
verses from the Bible -- dry, distant, impersonal words designed to serve as
a diversionary device.  To me and my husband, it was a travesty.  But to his
mother, I'm sure, it was the only way she could handle it.

------

My mother still lives in a small town, too -- the same place where my
brother and I grew up.  It's the kind of town where everyone knows everyone
else -- who their affairs have been with, who paid off whom to get out of
trouble, and what really happens behind some of those closed doors.  But
when the person the gossips are talking about comes along, they stop wagging
their tongues.  So the gossipers know everything about everyone (or think
they do, anyway), but the gossipees can go on pretending they don't.

I wanted our family to be above all that.  I thought a little paragraph in
the funeral program would address the issue honorably.  Everyone knew what
Brent had, and we could confront and defuse it with only a few words.  I
appealed to Mother that this would give courage to another family in town
whose daughter we knew was dying of AIDS.  To include it would be true to
Brent's memory.

Mother chose not to include the paragraph.  Brent was gone, she said, but
she was still here.  She could cling to her public denial.

I felt it was a lost opportunity.  Sooner or later, everyone in this country
will be affected by AIDS -- whether the afflicted person is a brother,
lover, cousin, father, mother, or friend.  By facing the disease openly and
talking about it, we could help ease our own pain while giving our sick
loved ones the support they desperately need.  By not sweeping their
illnesses under the rug, we would be letting them know that we love them,
respect them, and refuse to deny any part of the value of the lives they
led.

In the end, I acquiesced to my mother's wishes.  I knew that she was doing
the best that she could.

Everything else about Brent's funeral was the way he would have wanted it. 
I never would have tolerated Brent's life being denied as our friend's was. 
I made clear to the Methodist preacher the magic of who Brent was, and that
his life was to be celebrated.  For the service we chose his favorite hymns,
and we had his grave dug next to my father's.  A friend of Brent's from New
York flew down to deliver an extraordinary eulogy.  The church was packed
with people who had known Brent since he was just a baby.  And as it turned
out, the funeral was a triumphant testimony to his spirit.

A few months later, the child of my mother's friends died, too.  Mother had
known the parents for some 40 years and their daughter since she was born. 
She had been sick when Brent was ill; yet neither parents -- these friends
of almost half a century -- had ever been able to even mention to one
another the greatest pain in their lives.  To their generation, the stigma
of AIDS was too great.

Finally, last Christmas, the girl's mother broached the subject.  My mother
didn't say much, but she gave her friend a magazine article I'd written
about the beginning of the healing process.  I was proud of her.  At least
it was a start.

(Beth Arnold is a freelance writer who has written for GQ, Mirabella, and
American Way.  She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.)