Forty-Four
A story about my father who died of AIDS,
and a family coming together to heal.
This originally appeared in Graphic Content: True Stories from Top Creatives. I’m publishing it again as March 26th, 2015 marks the 30th year anniversary
of my father’s death. Today, I honor him by retelling his story. You honor
me by reading it. Thank you.
I turn 44 this year. My father died when he was 44. This year is the 44th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village,
where I grew up. It’s all relative.
My father Paul Heimbuch, the second oldest of six children was raised during the 1950’s in a middle-class, Irish Catholic family. He grew up across the Hudson River in the blue-collar town of Weehawken, New Jersey. A very funny, intelligent man and talented artist, my father was part of the first wave of patients diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980’s. After a brief fight with the disease, he died in the spring of 1985.
This is the story of how a family that struggled with my father’s sexuality and illness came together and experienced a healing through the collaborative process of making a quilt together in his name. We did this for our grief, for each other, for our family. Most of all, we did this to honor and celebrate a life that fell quiet too soon and far too young.
Completed 10 years after his death, the quilt I initiated on behalf of my father, now travels the world as a part of The Names Project Foundation telling the story of his life, as shared by his family and friends. His quilt, measuring 3 feet by 6 feet is part of the larger tapestry woven into the narrative of a generation lost to the tsunami that was the initial storm of AIDS.
I was in the backseat of my grandmother’s Cadillac when life changed forever. My mother was sitting in the front, on the passenger side. Both of us waiting for my grandmother to return from her hair appointment at the mall. I was 14 and too young to drive; my mother, a Michigan native but now a full-fledged New Yorker and without a driver’s license. So we sat together. Parked in the back lot.
It was the summer of 1984 and I was staying on my uncle’s farm in Michigan. My mother’s side of the family also being Irish Catholic meant lots of children and constant activity. Life was rarely dull. It was fantastic actually. My days were full of adventure, exploring, hiking, swimming, biking, playing baseball, working on the farm and just being a kid.
This day however was a rare, quiet afternoon. It was a welcomed break, even if I was with my mother and grandmother at the mall. It was in the receding serenity of this moment that my mother chose to tell me the news. In a hushed, gentle voice, her eyes soft, my mother said, “Chris, your dad is sick.” A pause, followed by a deep breath... “He has cancer.” Several months after my father passed away, she would tell me that she found it hard in that moment to say he had AIDS. I understood and never was upset about how she told me this news.
As she continued to provide more details, the image of my father and his illness slowly sinking in, I turned away from the sound of her voice and stared out at the half-filled parking lot. My chest heavy. A lump in my throat. I knew it wasn’t cancer. I knew it was AIDS. And I knew what it meant.
To deter any further discussion, I mustered the only words I could: “It must be the cigarettes…” Another pause and deep breath followed. “I don’t think so, hon.” my mother said. Sensing I needed space, she shifted toward the front of the car and looked out her window, gazing no place in particular. We waited in silence for my grandmother to return. I pretended to fall asleep on the back seat. Summer stopped being summer that day.
On Saturday mornings I would walk from my mother’s apartment in the West Village to my father’s apartment in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. Now hip and cool, back in the day Chelsea was a different kind of neighborhood. It had more grit and was predominantly low-middle income families. Black. Latino. White. Caribbean. In the 1980’s, Chelsea was the proverbial melting pot. In warmer months, the smell of barbecue filled the streets and salsa music always soared in the air. When the neighborhood kids were out playing, someone’s mother or older sister was always on a stoop, keeping a watchful eye — regardless of your background or who you belonged to. These were days of innocence on West 20th Street.
When my father and I weren’t visiting family, large parts of our weekends were spent in his design studio. He was an art director. A job and title I would later hold myself. As he focused on his own projects, I sketched away for hours. It was perfect bliss. Working side by side in silence, these were cherished afternoons with my father. These were the early moments of instruction for me, where he taught me parts of his craft that would later become my own. In a windowless office in midtown, this is where my love for design was born.
It makes me happy to think of those days. I remember catching my father watching me draw one afternoon. Later, a smile on his face, as I told him about my imaginary client and what I had created. Sometimes words didn’t need to be said to make a connection. His smile was enough. Those days were some of the happiest of my life.
On the weekends, Saturday night held the rare treat of TV. But before we settled in for The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, my father and I would watch the evening news. I still wonder if he tuned in out of habit. Or, to understand if progress was being made in understanding the mysterious autoimmune disease ravaging gay communities across the country. Inevitably, when a segment came on, a stillness fell over the room. Breaths held, eyes trained on a black and white, 9” Toshiba TV. We watched reports of this emerging nightmare in silence, both of us too scared to talk.
My entire body froze, rigid with anxiety in those moments. I remember thinking “In a few years we’ll laugh about this. Dad will be ok.” My adolescent defense trying to protect me against the deep fear I had about him being sick. About the private truth that I knew. About the thoughts I had, thinking he wouldn’t make it. No one really did back then.
As months passed, my father got progressively weaker, and thinner. Three layers of clothing could no longer hide his diminishing, shrinking frame. Ashen, his Kaposi’s sarcoma was becoming more difficult to cover up. Spots covered his face, arms and legs. His hair, once an elegant ‘salt and pepper’ was now dull and thinning. Constant, crushing fatigue was his reality. Too tired to walk or move, his couch became his bed. He slept a lot and he was starting to fade. Death was close. My mother said if there was anything I needed to tell my father, that now was the time. In these last days, everyone did their best to comfort him.
I had just woken up. Hearing me stir, my mother knocked and entered my room. Sitting at the edge of my bed, her eyes were honest, focused and damp. Taking a deep breath, she told me that my father had died. As she would say later on, it was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. I asked some questions. When his funeral would be I think. I also asked to be
left alone. Then I cried; face down in my pillow and I cried until exhaustion. When no more tears ran, I fell back asleep. I wanted this to be a bad dream.
As a family, in the decade that followed my father’s death, we rarely talked much about my father. Silence, indeed, equaled death. The risk was too great for his name to be brought up in social conversation. Speaking of ‘Paul’ would be to acknowledge that he was gone, and that it was AIDS that claimed his life. Which he had only acquired because he was gay. The rare times his name came up were quickly followed another topic to distract us all. If the TV was on and a news story happened to be about AIDS, the channel was changed. Worse, it was often just turned off.
Once a central figure in the family due to his sweet nature, his cooking at the holidays and ability to make everyone laugh, my father’s forty-four year history was reduced to a few, infrequent lines. This period in my life was extremely difficult time and I was very angry. Still mourning his loss, but due to the absence in which we would discuss him, I was also dealing with the denial of my father’s life. That pain ran very deep. I was desperate and what I did next probably saved my life.
Awareness around the Internet in 1994 was building, but email was far from ubiquitous and cell phones were a luxury. Letters and landlines were still the norm for getting in touch. For the project I was about to undertake, I would use them both, a lot and often.
This journey would begin with a letter I sent to my father’s siblings and close friends. In it, I addressed that as we were approaching the 10-year anniversary of Paul being gone from our physical lives, that I wanted to do something to acknowledge this moment. I also wanted to acknowledge that it was AIDS that took his life. Finding my courage, I shared that I wanted to make a quilt for him together, as a family. And lastly, that I wanted to have a Mass for him, where we honored his history and relationship to us. Yes, a gay man who died of AIDS but also, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a husband, a friend and an artist.
Phone calls followed and for the first time, I was speaking openly with my aunts, uncles and family friends about my father. Some conversations were difficult. Some were ok. For the most part, none of those first calls were easy. For anyone.
At first, there was concern around who would be involved in this family event. In particular, some of my younger cousins had not been told the truth about my father and what he had actually died from; let alone were they told that their uncle had been gay. A few cousins at the time of his death were simply too young and wouldn’t have understood. Discussing the complexities of his sexuality would have been too difficult. Now older, while not a parent myself, I understand the instinct to protect those young lives from something no one truly understood in full at the time. But it was time now.
My grandmother was in her 70’s when I wrote the letter. Once the conversations began amongst us all, the question was routinely asked: “Was I planning on talking to grandma?”. I was. Of course, I was. This was about our healing. This was about his peace. We would have neither, let alone he, my father would have no true rest without the participation of his own mother, the woman who gave him life.
It was on an overcast Saturday afternoon that my mother and I took New Jersey Transit from Penn Station to my grandmother’s home at the Jersey Shore. Once we arrived at my grandmother’s, we settled in.
As we always did, we almost immediately had some laughs. It felt good to be there. After my father died, my relationship with my grandmother had transcended to be something else. It became different.
While I never replaced him as a son to her, I sometimes felt like one
to her nonetheless. And I loved her dearly.
Around lunchtime, she put out a spread of cold cuts with white bread, iceberg lettuce, pickles, tomatoes and French’s yellow mustard. As always there was Entenmann’s cake. Any other day, this would be a great afternoon. But tension was in the air and it was palpable. My grandmother knew this was no ordinary visit from the city for us. After lunch and following a little chit chat… it was time. As my mother did years earlier: a pause, followed by
a deep breath.
Looking my grandmother in her beautiful Irish eyes, I came out for my father telling her that her oldest son had been gay. In the most gentle way I could, I told her that he had died of AIDS. My hands in hers, clenching tighter and strong, she had questions. So we talked. She had more questions and we talked some more. And then, after sitting and talking in her kitchen for most of the afternoon it was all, ok.
It took some time for her to understand the concept of the quilt, but more importantly after understanding and understanding why I had to do this my grandmother said she wanted to participate — of course that she would attend his Mass.
Relieved, exhausted and needing a bit of cheerfulness, I went to
the living room, searching the radio station for her favorite: Frank Sinatra. Dialing through the stations, to my complete awe Bruce Springsteen’s Philadelphia came on the first channel selected. My mother and I looked at one another from across the room. Words were not spoken. They were unnecessary. From that moment on, we knew everything was going to be all right. For my grandmother, for the family. For my father.
We held his Mass the following spring in the West Village at Saint Joseph’s Church. Through the horror of the late 80’s, when it felt like everyone in the community was losing a friend, a lover, a brother or a father this was a church of hope. It was a refuge from the storm. It is for this reason that we were blessed to work with a most incredible pastor, Father Aldo Tos. He helped to bring peaceful, loving closure, to my father’s life.
Upon arriving, the quilt was lovingly displayed in the foyer and entrance of Saint Joseph’s. It was beautiful and it represented love — for him and for his life. At Mass, his mother, siblings, nephews, nieces, friends and his greatest caretaker in his last days — my mother — joined, witnessed and participated in our final goodbye to him. With love and understanding. With tears and hugs. No longer someone we were afraid to talk about, we acknowledged
the entire man he was and the lives he touched. Mainly, we honored
a life lost.
In the years that followed, one of my father’s sisters and his biggest protector growing up would work with AIDS patients in Alabama. A cousin of mine would later become a Director at Gay Men’s Heath Crisis. As a family, we now speak regularly about my father with no fear of anything at all. We merely remember a man, who died too young, too soon.
There are no more secrets.
With two beautiful cousins now pregnant with their first-child, new life
will be born into our family this year. And in a few months, I’ll turn 44.
The same age my father was, when he died. I think how fast my life has gone, poignantly marked now by our shared age. But life is going on. Life moves on. Life is just that — life. And it is beautiful.
My memory serves to remind me that some of my most special times with my father were in his studio, both of us creating art, side-by-side. I make and create art to this day and in those hours, he is never far from my thoughts. The creation of the quilt, undoubtedly artwork in its own right, also serves as tangible evidence of the love for my father. Created together, as a family.
My father’s quilt now shares his story with the world. That is my solace and my peace. Because of The Names Project, his story is shared with people that are strangers to me. But strangers I love and support due to the common bond that weaves our stories together. I hope when others see his quilt they understand a family created it together for someone they loved very much. I hope this brings them strength and courage. I hope it brings them peace, as it did for me. As it did for my family. As it did for my father, Paul Heimbuch — A father, a son, a brother, a uncle, a husband, a friend and an artist.
Excerpted from Graphic Content: True Stories from Top Creatives.
Reprinted with permission from PRINT Books
