All Souls Day

A., a long ago client, stopped by to visit. “Do you have a picture of C.?” she asked me. “I want to get a tattoo for my friend.” C. died of AIDS at 29 in 2018. While I looked for pictures in my computer, A. told me stories about the things she and C. used to do, hanging out on the pier and having fun. Then she told me a story C. had never shared. “I knew that guy was no good,” she said, “but C. thought it was OK. He knew he had HIV, but he didn’t tell her. That’s how she got it.” I thought about C.’s last year, the long stretch she spent on the ventilator at Jacobi Hospital with nobody but our staff, one of our social work interns, and her homeless friends for support. How her family swooped in at the last minute. I remembered our intern, still new to the work, telling me with confusion that it seemed like all her family cared about while she lay dying was her property, her TV and her benefit card. Then the funeral they held for her out of state, none of her friends invited, burying her in a suit as “Robert,” a name she hadn’t used in years. By then A. had finished her stories about their youthful adventures and her eyes were roaming the pictures in the frames on my wall. A’s been part of our community for a long time so she knew many of the forty faces there, all of them gone. Looking at N., another client who died of AIDS, she told me about visiting him at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx. We’d gotten him moved there when his medical team sat down with me and told me there was no point in continuing the treatment that was making him miserable. “He wanted a teddy bear, so I brought him one, a little blue teddy bear.” I remembered the New Year’s Eve before he died, how unhappy he was to be stuck in the hospital. A nurse had brought him soul food she made at home to try to cheer him up, and then Johnnie, our social worker at the time, and I got on a 3-way call with him late at night so that he would not have to be alone at midnight. “I know how he died, and him,” she said, going from photo to photo. “But what about her?” So I told her about the clients who died, the suicides and overdoses, infection and asthma, AIDS and accidents. Suddenly she said, “I was there when she died,” looking at a picture of L., a trans girl. “She was fighting and they cut her real bad and she didn’t realize.” I knew L.’s throat had been slit, but I didn’t know A. had been there. She told me how L. started to run, blood soaking her shirt, and then collapsed on the sidewalk. I don’t need this image in my mind, but I can tell she needs to tell this story, so I sit quietly catching the words as they come tumbling out. It was getting late and A. was tired, but calm, so she headed home, and I thought about the two more pictures I haven’t added to the frames yet, our growing community on the other side, and how thin the line is between here and not here.

As I finished writing this, the calendar caught my eye. Tomorrow is Nov. 2. All Souls Day.