1001
AIDS
STORIES
Personal experiences of HIV/AIDS
The Vancouver Initiative for AIDS Innovation
Drawing of Easter Armas © Ashley
Some of the names in this story may have been changed to protect privacy
An Easter Story
by Easter Armas
My name is Easter Armas and I am affected by AIDS. My story, like any good story, starts with a guy.
His name was Blair Partington. He was my friend, and was the first person I watched die from the complications of AIDS. The last week of his life changed the direction of mine.
Every day I would make him lunch, and stay until his partner Stephen came home from work. Most of the time I would sit on the stairs and watch Blair sleep. I felt helpless as he faded away, and worried what I would do if he stopped breathing.
The evenings were different. They were festive, boisterous and filled with Blair’s friends. After dinner we would lie on his bed to laugh and talk for hours.
Two days before Blair died we prepared a special meal, and he surprised us all by dressing himself and coming downstairs for dinner. He only ate a few bites, but that didn’t matter. It was enough that we were all together. It was Easter Sunday 1989.
Walking home from that special dinner, I met guy number two in this story. He was once a successful businessman, popular and handsome. He was eating out of a garbage can.
I was devastated and quickly turned away. He was skin and bones, and by the way he was acting he had dementia.
I cried all the way home and couldn’t understand. What had happened to our humanity? Why didn’t he have friends like Blair’s, to make sure he had food? Did he have a warm bed? Did anyone care that he wasn’t home?
I realised if I wanted humanity to care then it had to start with me.
A Loving Spoonful grew out of my anger and pain. It was the first AIDS organisation in Canada to provide free meals for people living with AIDS. On November 26, 1989 we served our first meal to five people in Vancouver. Last year we celebrated our 20th Anniversary, and by March 2010 we had served 1.75 million meals.
And A Loving Spoonful still provides a monthly communal meal, called Easter’s Sundays, reminding me at least of that meal with Blair on Easter Sunday twenty years ago.
When we first started I truly believed that our services would only be needed for five years, because by then there would a cure for AIDS. Right?
Wrong.
But that is still my dream. Until that day the story of A Loving Spoonful will carry on, in our belief that “No one living with HIV/AIDS should live with hunger”.
© Easter Armas
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Comment on this story
Hello Easter: I don't know you but I remember Blair. His name came to my mind tonight when I was watching a news report about children who were born infected with aids so I went to the internet and found this site. I am sure this is the same Blair I knew.
I worked with him in North Vancounver for perhasps two years before I left the Lower Mainland for the Interior in 1981. So you know it has been a long time.
Blair was a wonderful person - very kind and thoughtful. I was his Supervisor at the time and he was the most helpful and cooperative person you would ever want to meet. I have never forgotten him.
I read of his passing at the time and was saddened.
I am happy to read that it meant so much to you and what you have done since because of him.
Unfortunately, there is still no cure, and as the news report stated, they do not even know what the futre holds for these children who were born with the disease.
I wish you well - M
My dear Easter,
You have given so much to others, and I pray every day that Karma will be returned to you in whatever way is most important to you. I will always proudly display the badge of honor it is to be your friend.
Thank You for all that you do!
(And HUGS from L.M & N.G. and R.G)
hello Easter how are you i knew you are a so good loving care person i stile miss you all love hadi
WOW! Awesome tale! Especially as it links to a continous action that lives on today in the Loving Spoonful initiative. I would love to see all these articles as part of a short story collection and being sold on www.amazon.org. It is amazing how the stories are all written by different writers, yet there is an interconnectedness that resonates. This s indeed a brilliant literary mosiac of feelings & experiences and expressed thoughts.