DeKALB | Many people do not know of anybody affected by the AIDS epidemic. I knew two.

For me, taking part in the AIDS walk Sunday morning was a lot more than handing over a crinkly one dollar bill to support the cause, because in more ways than one, I was the cause.

At the fragile age of five, I was told my uncle was “sick.” Sparing me the details of his illness, my parents never told me why he was going to die or what he was going to die from. I guess it is understandable to withhold the fact that one of the main people in my life was a homosexual before I even knew what “homosexual” truly meant.

I really didn’t know what to do with my uncle once he reached a certain stage in his illness. I didn’t comprehend that the man who so lovingly read my sister and I the Sunday comics week after week could no longer pull off such a feat as his voice has degraded down to a mere coarse whisper. I had no idea that the guy who looked after me with such care and tenderness was dying in front of my eyes, as he lay slumped over in my grandmother’s reclining chair, unable to convey even the simplest of emotions. And I truly never took in the enormity of his death, and I haven’t still to this day.

It’s been probably a good six or seven years since I’ve visited his grave. It’s not that I am avoiding paying my respects to my fallen family member, but there is just so much I have questioned since his passing. And sitting here, 13 years and a handful of months later, I still can’t grasp the fact that he died in the way he did.

My uncle didn’t die of heart disease or cancer. He didn’t smoke too much or wrap his car around a light-post, no, that’s not how he met his end. My uncle died of AIDS, which at the time was a subject of both immense ignorance and absolute embarrassment. Gay wasn’t “okay” back in the day and anyone HIV-positive was immediately outcast in a society of wandering eyes and worrying souls.

It was a few years before my uncle’s passing that Magic Johnson, widely considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, came clean of his HIV diagnosis. Such an announcement created a rift in the NBA, as half the players were scared to guard him, and the other half didn’t even want to be on the same court as him. And this level of fear and shun was being committed against “the” sports figure at the time. Someone who was so renowned in the sports world was garnering stares and awkward looks by the barrelful. And if such a thing was happening to an American status-figure, how would the world react to an everyman’s diagnosis?

It wasn’t too difficult to get over my uncle’s death, and as horrible as I feel for writing that, it is very true. My ignorance was indeed bliss, as the less I knew about his unfortunate passing, the better. But the pain I went through and eventually recovered from with my uncle would come to rear its ugly head once again no less than five years after the fact.

My grandmother and I had the closest relationship imaginable. Every time she comes up in conversations, my mother tells me how I “could do no wrong in her eyes.” And to a certain degree, that was true. I was her special little boy. I hear stories of how I would break her most prized possessions and she would just smile and pick up the pieces that have fallen. I find those stories to be completely untrue because to me, I was her most prized possession.

I got special treatment that my sister nor my cousins received. If it were one of them throwing a ball through the basement door window, they would’ve been punished and sent home. But I was rewarded, almost, for doing such a thing. I always wondered why I was her baby until I settled on the realization that I was the son she no longer had. And come soon enough, she would be the grandmother I no longer had.

While my uncle’s death affected me quite minimally, the loss of my grandma killed me inside. In late 1998 or so, she started getting sick, which instilled a small bit of fear in me. But the circumstances of her illness and eventual death were different from the demise of my uncle five years prior. Because I was a bit older and so beloved by her, my parents were a little more forward with what was going on. They filled me in that she was in fact going to pass, but they still veiled the details of how, when, and why. From what I was told, she died of “spina bifida” in the spring of 1999. No where in any of our conversations were the words “AIDS” or “HIV” mentioned. As memory serves, my sister, who was older and privy to the information, told me that our grandma had the disease.

After her passing, feelings of abandonment and depression consumed my every action. The person who practically raised me from the day I was born would never draw another cartoon character with me, let alone draw another breath. It was something that took me years to recover from emotionally, and still finds its place in my thoughts every so often. And every one of those thoughts is a hope, a wish, a dream that I could just see her one more time. Is just wanting to see her and play “I see a color” or have a bite of the beef stroganoff she perfected too much to ask?

As I sit here, picking my brain of the minute details of how two of the more influential people in my life have passed, I’ve come to realize that the fact they did in fact die of AIDS doesn’t bother me. Things are much different now in 2006, as the overall level of ignorance on the illness has decreased, while awareness has increased.

I didn’t do the walk because I wanted to raise money to put towards a cure. And I didn’t do it because I figured Sunday was a nice day for a drawn-out stroll about town. I did it because I respect those of my family which have fallen, and I respect the cause. But most importantly, I did it because nobody should have to know someone affected by AIDS.

Let alone two.

Derek Walker is a Web Reporter for the Northern Star.