Avalanche

 Avalanche

 

It’s beginning to feel like the bad years of the AIDS epidemic again when deaths were happening so frequently that you didn’t have time to absorb one before then next and your calendar was filled with memorial services.  We didn’t even make it to Iris Long’s memorial on June 13th before the news came that James Wagner had died on June 7th.  Then on June 30th, our client Nahla died.

 

Yesterday I was sluggishly getting breakfast ready while trying to stay cool on a 100 degree day, when Antoine, a long ago client from Sylvia’s Place called.  He was calling to tell me he just moved back to NYC and ask me for help getting in contact with his old friends, but while we were talking he mentioned that Bradley Curry was gone.

 

Sylvia’s Place is located at Metropolitan Community Church and when I was the Director there, Bradley was the Pastor’s omnipresent assistant. He was a small, bald man who was always on the move, seemingly single handedly holding the place together.  In addition to all of his regular tasks, Bradley organized art exhibits at the church, several of which included my sculptures.  He left MCC years after I did, but we stayed in touch.  He was making and selling his own greeting cards and also doing social media consulting.  

 

The next blow came this morning when a client called to tell me that Jeffrey Newman, a former New Alt volunteer and the founder of Backpacks for the Street, had been found dead in his apartment.  His partner of 22 years Jayson Connor had suffered a cardiac arrest and died on their anniversary a week ago and Jeffrey literally could not live without him.  My client was a volunteer with Backpacks for the Street and was worrying about what would happen to the organization.  I told him I hoped one of the other volunteers could step up and help hold it together, but Jeffrey was the type to do everything himself which will make that more difficult.

 

Sweating at my desk in my 88 degree office, my brain is oddly blank, like the circuits overloaded and flipped the breakers to the off position. It’s too much to absorb.  I feel like I could just sit here and stare blankly indefinitely, but it’s Sunday, the kitchen volunteers are starting to arrive downstairs, the first clients will be here in 45 minutes and I have to get moving.

 

 

 

 



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