Dying with AIDS

Abstract

Consider the following scenarios (names have been altered except where people have expressly requested that their actual names be used):

• 1. Sally, a youthful-looking grandmother of 36, whose 18-year-old daughter contracted AIDS through a drug-using husband who “snorted,” rather than injected, heroin and cocaine, describes her relationship to her 9-month-old granddaughter Meegan who has tested HIV positive. She relates that she barely interacts with her daughter (who currently resides with her and the baby) and that she has distanced herself, half-consciously, from her beloved Meegan. The infant has tested seropositive three times and it may not be known for another year whether the child will ultimately test “negative.”

• 2. At Starcross Monastery in northern California, the Starcross Community members prepare to bury Aaron with his toys in the handmade coffin Brother Tolly has fashioned from native wood. The year-old infant died of respiratory complications from his AIDS. Emergency firefighters had refused to answer the distress dispatch, having decided in advance that they were unprepared for such emergencies. At the last moment before interment, the child’s teenage mother, who had rendered the care of her child to Starcross, recanted, and requested that Aaron be buried in her town. Tolly and the others buried his toys anyway, and marked the grave with a cross (McCarroll, 1988).