Stefan Lynch:
I was 10 when he was diagnosed. I remember I was on the beach at Fire Island and I saw him and he was covered in these purple spots. And within, I think two months, Steve was dead. And that was pretty much a succession of deaths of my family throughout the next decade.
My stepdad, Bill, died in '87. My dad died in '91 after a really grueling six months of me taking care of him. I was 19 and summer break from college, I'm exhausted from taking care of my dad. And I called up my Auntie Eddie. I said, can you help? And within a week, he'd organized 40 people to do round the clock shifts. He was the only other person in the room with me and my mom when my dad died. A
t that point, everyone had died except for a handful of stragglers who I now hold near and dear to my heart, my aunties. That was a powerful family. There was a lot of love. And they modeled for me how to survive an epidemic, even if you were dying while doing it.
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