9 Quotes by Ruth Coker Burks

When I met them sick in the hospital, it was too late. But out there in the world, I seized on every bit of joy I could scrape out of the pan. These men had lived on the margins so long that coming into the light to ask for help scared them to death. I had to walk them through the steps, keeping things fun.

That's right. I have you. And I have my guys. And I have Allison. But I spent all this time believing everything I heard in church--that I need a husband to be whole, to have a family for Allison. And the whole time I've been creating one.

It wasn't just the people who died of AIDS. Even many who did not have the virus ended up committing suicide. They lived through the depths of the epidemic only to take their own lives. But I knew the memories they were living with, and why it might be too much to bear.

Paul and I sat in lawn chairs in my yard, and usually we could cheer each other up by talking about Billy. It was September 1993, and he had been gone four months. We had started the thing you do, where you collect the stories you'll tell over and over again. You begin to polish the edges of a memory--something funny he said or a specific performance--until the edges are smoothed and the story is comforting.

I'm here," I'd say. And I'd listen to them cry for an hour, because they couldn't get it out or they didn't know how. "It's okay, just go ahead and cry. And if you can talk then you can talk. And if you can't, well, you know, you let me know when you want to hang up because I won't.

I grew up steeped in these secrets from my mother's generation and was observant enough to see them repeating in mine. But I kept everything to myself. It just bothered me that people thought they could hide their own sins by inventing ones for others."Seems as though we should bring a gift basket to Our House," I said. "An apology. Say something like, 'You were the stranger, and we didn't welcome you.

I go to the grave shared by my father and Jimmy. The question I get most, the one I hate, is why I went into his room. And why I helped people. Again and again, "Why did you do it? How?" The answer is, How could I not? The real question is, How could *you* not?

To his fans at Our House, he was a symbol that having HIV or AIDS did not mean that you had to go hide in exile. You could stay in the game, be social, snatch trophies and *live.* The literature about HIV that I read and shared, by gay men for gay men, emphasized a focus on living with HIV, rather than on dying. But that was all theoretical, just words, until they could see it in practice.

The song ended, but people wouldn't let him go. It was a blur after that; he had to do four more songs before they let him leave the stage. Two lines of people formed on either side of the stage, so he wouldn't have to move around. We all knew this was goodbye, and we were giving him his flowers now, while he could see how much he meant to all of us.