When protease inhibitors and combination therapy came along the whole atmosphere surrounding HIV changed. But, in the years before that, medical providers and social service agencies were really able only to provide death with dignity. Death was always in the air – the reality, anticipation, confrontation, discussion, acceptance, or denial of death.  And denial was the only one that ultimately didn’t help.

The old sayings about the inevitability of death suddenly took on a real and urgent significance and loomed especially large for couples. As if relationships were not already complex enough, suddenly the imminence of the death of one or both partners threw a looming shadow over the landscape of love. The test was a supreme one and the effect could be dramatically different from one couple to another.

I saw relationships that were being torn apart by the strain – partners who would run, literally, from their ailing friend, unable to meet the challenge. On the other hand, I remember sitting in one client’s sunny apartment when the conversation turned to his partner. I asked how the relationship was holding up. He smiled and said they had been brought closer than ever. “Literally close”, he said. “When we lie together at night we hold each other real tight – so tight that nothing can separate us.”

But they were separated, of course, as they knew they would be.