Reflecting on the AIDS Memorial Quilt — November 28, 2019

Epstein

Written by Scott, a writer and resident of Clare Housing

The AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The Quilt was a way to honor lives lost, and show to those in power the scale of the epidemic.

Sitting in a cold office last week my friend and I were talking about the upcoming World AIDS Day or The Day of Remembrance. When I asked her, “What happened to the AIDS Memorial Quilt?”

I think at this point some of you may be wondering, ‘What is the AIDS Memorial Quilt?’ The Quilt is a memorial to and a celebration of the lives of people lost to the AIDS pandemic. Each panel is 3 feet (0.91 m) by 6 feet (1.8 m), approximately the size of the average grave; this connects the ideas of AIDS and death more closely.

For long term survivors, we all know all too well about the quilt, especially the sight of it all laid out on stadium fields as it toured the US, or even more iconically on the Mall in Washington D.C.  The reading of the names on each panel square that made up the quilt. Names like Rock Houston, Arthur Ashe and  Amanda Blake (Miss Kittie from Gunsmoke) to name a few.

With its start back in 1987, many individuals who died of AIDS-related illnesses did not receive funerals due to the social stigma of AIDS by surviving family members and the outright refusal by many funeral homes and cemeteries to handle the deceased remains. Lacking a memorial service or gravesite, The Quilt became a way for survivors to remember to celebrate our loved one’s lives. It also was a visual to show the numbers of human lives lost to this disease. It became a visual to show the government officials the need to step up funding and research dollars.

In the quilt, are panels for my friends. Panels that I helped put together with my own hands. I remember those long evenings piecing together little bits of the lives of my dead friends, so many of whom were like family. We personalized them with trinkets, letters of good-bye and handsewn scraps of fabric — anything that helped remember each individual’s life. The tears and laughter that happened while we made each panel was our only therapy. That got us through our grieving even if it was for that brief moment. As a community, we were paralyzed by grief and rage and powerlessness.

Time has moved us to a now. Finally, HIV+ people who have passed away are able to have funerals and be buried in cemeteries. The need for a quilt was no longer an important piece for people to use as a remembrance.

I tried to track down to see where the Quilt representing Minnesota may be. I reach out to Quatrafoile Library thinking they could tell me. The person I spoke with explained that was way before their time, and they proceeded to say that the library was for the LGBTQ population and questioned why it would be there in the first place. I left my name and number to see if someone could answer my question.

After some more research, I found out that the Quilt is still maintained and displayed by The NAMES Project Foundation. And does tour around in a scaled-down version. In 2016 the Quilt’s weight was at 52 tons. There was an announcement made just last week that the Quilt will now find a permanent home in a purpose-built interpretive center in San Francisco, the place where the first panels were created. My question was answered.

So on World AIDS Day, I will remember the names on panels I made back in the 1980s. Although times have changed, that piece of history will not fade in my lifetime.

“AIDS Memorial Quilt” by Cocoabiscuit is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0