As I walked out of the Tate Modern, from the UK AIDS Quilt Memorial, I was thinking back to people I knew living with HIV in the 1980s and 90s… Some stories I’d like to share, here, are for particular people who didn’t have a quilt, well, not one that was visible that day. I am hoping that the reason there was no quilt is because they are still alive.
Category: In piam memoriam
The Longest Day
What I find so strange, is that in that one grave, the five of them are laid to rest, including a wife and her two husbands!
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Where were you when the Berlin Wall came down? With so many epoch-changing events during a person’s lifetime, the fall of the Berlin Wall ranks as one of the greatest world events during my own life time.
Oskar Kusterer – 12 July 1945
Why should I care? Why is Oskar Kusterer’s memory or memorial significant to me?
12-07-1945
16 VI 1928 – and other Skeletons in the Closet
Like something from a Romeo and Juliette tale, of star-crossed lovers, ‘the end’ was just so tragic, all round.
What’s a ‘wanger’?
The GP had just done a home visit, so she phoned me and asked me!
Where were YOU when Diana died?
I remember a constant flow of funereal music playing on the car radio, interspersed with the National Anthem, repeated every quarter of an hour.
Love is …
There’s a time for living, and a time for dying.
[Not] The angel of death!
This is one of two stories I’ll tell you about a hospice I used to visit as a priest. I used to visit the hospice every couple of days or so. The staff new I was a registered nurse, as well as a local Catholic priest. Some days I’d go in early in…
Hoc est corpus … hic est sanguinis
Similar to Damian’s story, Cosmo was a patient on the same ward, in and out with every new opportunistic infection or tumour his HIV could lay its grubby hands on. In the end he developed severe Kaposi’s sarcoma, with the classic bodily marks, from the tip of his nose, then dotted all over his body,…
Compassion in nursing care – we’re nothing without it!
Over the past few years, nurses and midwives in the UK have been reminded of the “6 Cs” of nursing care. I first heard my friend Joanne Bosanquet (MBE, Queen’s Nurse, Deputy Chief Nurse, Public Health England) promote the model. On the one hand, it’s great – especially for those new to the profession, to…
An inspirational person, a teaching icon
“Hello Dolly!”
Trilogy of a beautiful Princess
From Diana to Harry:
HIV matters!