aids steals another friend

Another day in Johannesburg…another friend lost to AIDS.

I was ready today to write about a number of things. Instead, we will simply memorialize another in the endless string of losses to a disease that shows no signs of slowing it’s attack.

Ellen is gone. She had lived in the church for the better part of 20 years. She and her husband, Cobra, worked as the church property managers and maintenance supervisors. They cleaned. They kept watch over the premises. And they raised their two children in a one room apartment in the basement of the church. Cobra passed away not too long ago. And though it was obvious that AIDS took him, local law forbade anyone from saying so. So, Ellen’s death is not a surprise. But it is a shame. It is a shame for Ellen, who, like her husband, never saw the age of forty. It is a shame for her young son Jason, who now faces an all too common future – one that is parentless and altogether uncertain. It is a shame for this country, which spirals further into the clutches of this disease, of this crisis, every day.

Another day in Johannesburg…another senseless, preventable, treatable loss to AIDS...


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