A Memorial
Today would have been Wilson's 59th birthday. He wasn't here to celebrate it. He died around his 43rd birthday. On Good Friday that year. He had gotten the HIV virus from a blood transfusion before there was a test to find it. He got AIDS before all the drugs that are now available that are prolonging so many lives.

I still remember Wilson many times during the year. We were going to grow old together and share old memories that go back to high school. We didn't make it. Life is never what we expect it to be- but it can be what we do with it that makes the difference.

I still remember that Good Friday. I had left Pennsylvania the night before, saying good-bye for the last time. I took the train back to Wisconsin and, when I got to Chicago and called home I learned that he was gone. Later, as my friend Rick drove me back from the station in Milwaukee he commented that in Native American cultures they believed that the soul of the deceased would come back in some animal form to let us know that things are okay. As he finished that statement I saw out of the corner of my eye a hawk soaring on the thermals of that early spring afternoon.

Hawks- raptors- Hawk Mountain in Pennslvania were one of Wilson's and my great adventures together. I smiled and felt an assurance. God has ways. It was Good Friday- but I knew Easter was a reality.

Sadly, HIV/AIDS is still with us. Some are saying that the infection rate in the United States may be climbing again. Unsafe sexual activities, effects of complacency since it doesn't appear to be a "death sentence" anymore; these get in the way of common sense about a disease that is so preventable. More common sense, more awareness, more willingness to step aside from instant gratification and think about the consequences. Such are some of the ways to prevent the conintuing spread of the disease here in the United States.

I pray that no one has to go through what Wilson, his wife and son, his family and friends had to go through.