lifetime memory...

I was enlightened today.. 

He may not have told her the truth before he died and I guess its good that he didn’t because then she wouldn’t have had this deeper understanding of the matter..

She sat through a lecture today.  It was a lecture about HIV/AIDS.  The lecture was lengthy but it was interesting and definitely informative.  It took her through the publicly known facts about the virus, things like the different ways a person is likely to contract the virus, the different treatments available to people who are living with virus and the different methods of prevention.

And then there's the cheesy phrases like: prevention is better than cure.

But here's the interesting part, her attention was caught by a diagram that illustrated the different stages that a person, that has been infected, goes through before he or she dies.

In the first 12 weeks, a person is highly infectious then the next 10 years or so they reach a level of stability, so the virus lives in the body but its dormant.

In that period, their chances of infecting the next person aren’t too high but that still does not wipe out the fact that it is highly possible.

She must have met him during this period.  Everything was masked and the surface was polished.  She would have never suspected, but who would’ve.  And there it was, the magical life together.  Untainted and beautiful. Sacred and new.  Fun and knitted.  Violent and peaceful.  Fulfilling and promising..

Promising security, promising life, promising truth, promising marriage.. but killed by the unreality of a façade that created cloudiness until he died.

See, he said he would marry her and assured her that she was the only one.  But she still refused to consummate the relationship, he never penetrated her being, her soul. 
He was ill, and he didn’t know, she didn’t know this and if she had given herself up, she would’ve been well on her way to the grave too.

She never got the chance to question him about where he had contracted the virus because he had never told her as soon as he had tested positive.

Fact of the matter is that she had refrained from ever having sex with him, she put herself ahead and that’s why she’s still alive.

She relinquished all grip on all that he was to her because there were many others besides her.

It’s the harsh reality.  The stigma is still attached to AIDS and no one takes the initiave to talk about the cornerstone of the epidermic.

Its until he got to the opportunistic diseases phase that he plunged into the whirlpool that was death, sucked all the life out of him and out of her… she watched the larger than life love of her life disappear into nothingness.  

He should have told her the truth, she could’ve revived him… it breaks her till this day.

He was the life she lost and in his death she lost herself, but because she abstained from him she died and was resurrected.

He died in pain, in silence and she could’ve done so much more..

T*