Peter Byrd Ages with AIDS
Peter Byrd,
November 2022
The night before I completed this remembrance, I spoke with my 40-year-old son, the older of two, about some family business. While we spoke, he mentioned that his closest friends’ fathers are all dead. He voiced his appreciation that not only was I alive, but I was present and important in his life. This was distinctly significant because when I was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1990, it was not a shock. I was in most ways, prepared for the news. What I had not anticipated was the realization that I would not see my sons, who were eight- and six-years old, grow to manhood. I’d been raised with nearly a dozen uncles who were all strong father figures with my dad being the model of energy, humor, support, intelligence and wisdom. What would be their lives without my support and love to navigate through a country that categorically devalues them on every level?
The story ends by the story not ending! Staying alive in a new way became the root of every decision I made from that day forward. Don’t get me wrong, I was still an immature, self-centered man whose journey of self-awareness and responsibility had just begun. There was no epiphany.
Ten years after my initial diagnoses, I was given 30 days to live. I made a commitment to myself that if I got up from that hospital bed, I would do things differently. Clearly, my way hadn’t worked. Again, there were no angels singing or blazing sunrise on which to base my reversal but like the old folks used to say, “Standing on a banana peel next to the grave.”
Those 30 days were marked by a desperate fear of the inevitable eventuality of AIDS. I would be skeletal (and was) marked by scars and bent by illness which I’d seen again and again. I continued to work but was unstable financially, poorly housed and developed a raging cocaine habit that tipped the life scale in a way that was unimaginable. I was working for Pan Am’s Worldpass office in Alexandria, Va., when I was offered help from the office manager. She had been a longtime purser or head steward for the long-haul international carrier. She was the purser on the last American flight out of Vietnam which was captured in headlines worldwide. At this time, she was the person who closed Pan Am reservations offices from Tokyo, Hawaii, San Francisco, New Orleans and then, the office in Alexandria, Va. The first week she arrived folks knew who she was, and her tires were slashed. She extended herself to me, sharing that her mother had died from conditions directly related to addiction. I was sent to the Pan Am building weekly for meetings with the Employment Assistance Program to meet with its director who now heads the Betty Ford Clinic. I was sent to Father Martin’s Ashley in Havre de Grace Maryland for 30 days to rehab.
The center was housed in a 30-room mansion that had belonged to United States Senator Millard Tydings. The joke was that my mother’s paternal family had roots in Havre de Grace since 1770. My mother was born in Havre de Grace and our childhood was shaped by summers and holidays there. Mom’s father had been a chauffeur for the senator for years at this house on the cliffs of the Chesapeake Bay where my HIV status was confirmed two days before Christmas. It was here that I started to become aware of an inexplicable confluence of Grace, for lack of a better word. I still feared a premature death (I was 34 years old) which was certain, yet I struggled to stand for the boys as best I could.
I left rehab and moved to a recovery house in Washington where everyone was living with HIV or had full blown AIDS and was in recovery from alcohol or narcotics. It normalized my struggle and successes.
Fast forward 10 years past homelessness, relapse and lots of Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings that tethered me to a recovery family that is still the sober home of my heart. In fact, two days before sitting to write this, I saw my first NA sponsor who I had not seen in 30 years. We spoke for nearly two hours as though it was a continued conversation from three decades before. I weep, like my father, for joy when overwhelmed. I was composed outside but was the full-on Niagara Falls (as I refer to my tears) on the inside.
It’s only another of the unfathomable gifts that I have become respectful of and thankful for. My dad used to say the worst two things regarding personal development is always getting what you want and never getting what you want. I was the former. So, I slid by everything and never faced any of my truths. AIDS was the first thing I consciously turned to face. It required me to face it. Addiction required me to face it. The most horrific disease in my generation now shared a bed with me every day and night.
The next inexplicable Grace came as I recovered at my mom’s house in Havre de Grace, Md., when I was taking 57 pills aily. I’d sleep in the downstairs bathroom so if the pills caused vomiting, I could just lean up to the toilet bowl. Couldn’t hope to walk to the bathroom in time. When I spoke at my mother’s church one Sunday and I said my mother couldn’t hear me up in her room and she shouted out loud, “Yes I did hear you.” She suffered with me.
An uncle who was head of pathology at Meharry Medical School told me not to reinfect myself because he believed my body would adjust to my virus. He was convinced that if no other virus was introduced to my system, my body would regulate itself, with medication. It was palliative advice and another in a sequence of lessons learned.
A counselor told me that everything would be said but I did not to say everything. My father’s mom used to say, “Don’t use up all your words.” She was sure I’d be calling to warn my child and go mute having have used up my words on foolishness. The warning still rings.
One of my second great grandmothers’ sister graduated from Lincoln Institute (University) in Jefferson City, Ma., in 1885. Cousins found her autograph book with signatures from family and fellow students and teachers. The school’s president, Inman Page, a former slave who was one of two first Black graduates from Brown University in 1872 wrote, “Endeavor to be the person you wish to be perceived as…”
When deeply discouraged, I realize that the things I’m afraid of have already happened. I think of the hundreds of personal acquaintances and friends who would come back for my worst 10 seconds if they had a choice. I have walked a dozen close friends to their transitions. I remember learning of the death of a dear friend only by seeing his name in a book of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Nothing was small about AIDS.
It was always too much.
Now, I am 67 years old, retired, take one pill a day for HA’, frequently do Federal grant reviews for several agencies and bureaus who implement programs that are not unlike the Ryan White programs that not only saved my life but moved me toward stability, sobriety and health. Reflecting, I see that the hard days have experientially qualified me to review programs to establish and sustain initiatives to improve health for marginalized populations. The AIDS continuum of care has become a model of chronic care.
In the 1980’s, I started copying hundred-year-old family photos. I looked at those photos thinking if they could live through that, I can thrive through this. It became three-volumes of self-published books titled, The “Son of Seven Daughters-A 350-Year American Family Album” of family history back to 1654.
I was one of many spokespersons in the Grady Hospital campaign, Atlanta Can’t Live Without Grady with my monster face gracing billboards on subways, and highways with a commercial ad. A year ago, I provided hospice care to my mother for two weeks until her death at home at age 89. I am rolling out a millinery website to sell my hand made women’s hats.
In a week, I begin a two-month voyage that starts with my third trip to Australia. Each thing is more unfathomable than the next. I attribute it all to living with AIDS. It has caused me to rise.
My sons are now 40and 38 years old and remain my signature paradox. I gave them life and they have given life to me. It is the gift of reflection in this inexplicable journey. Niagara Falls, my tears of joy, continue to fall 34-years after my 1988 infection.
