It’s safe to say that almost every family has probably hidden something from others, and maybe even one another, out of fear, shame, self-protection or even love. Not everyone feels the press of those reasons so acutely that the silence threaded into the secret-keeping lingers long after the secret has been revealed and becomes a crushing burden, eventually too difficult to carry.
My father was unwilling to chance infecting his patients, and he made the painful choice to end his medical practice, taking an advisory position in a national medical legal association. He refused to allow my mother, brothers or me to endure any form of ostracism because of his HIV status. His illness would be a secret.When my parents first found out about Dad’s infection, they didn’t tell me.
Pretending was easy. Even though Dad developed AIDS after five years and suffered one opportunistic infection after another, until the final year of his life, he didn’t look sick. He didn’t look different from any other dad I knew. Most days he could get up, put on a suit and go to work. He mowed the lawn and weeded the garden on weekends. He downhill skied and ice-skated and swam and boated. He took our golden retriever on long walks. Life moved forward, and we moved with it.
Ironically, though, the book’s contents remained largely unspoken within my family circle. By then I was newly married and living a thousand miles away. Lost somewhere in that distance and physical separation was the permission I believed I needed to break free, too — the new set of family rules that would help me navigate a world where the secret was no longer necessary. I packed away the fear, the grief, the loss, the anger, the confusion, the shame, and I kept on pretending.
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