On Monday, August 14, 1989, two hundred people gathered at a Hackensack, New Jersey, funeral home to say goodbye to AIDS activist Jeffrey Bomser. Local journalist Mike Kelly reported in his column for the next day's Bergen Record: "There were a rabbi, a Lutheran minister, and a Roman Catholic priest. There were gay people and straight people. There were retired men and career women. There was a mother with her infant." That infant was me, four days old at the funeral of my mother's first cousin, dead at 38 from AIDS-related causes just six months after AIDS took the life of his brother, Larry. I've always known that my great-aunt Evelyn and great-uncle Phil's only two children died in the AIDS epidemic the year I was born. I know it in the same way I know most family history without regard to how I first learned it, but until recently I'd never thought to ask about the rest of the story. |
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