Nov 26th, 2006
Scissor Sisters member talks about losing dad to AIDS
According to Guardian Unlimited, Scissor Sisters bandmember Ana Lynch (aka Ana Matronic) had a gay dad who died of AIDS.
Her experience of his death, the cover up, and the lack of support is all-too-familiar to people whose parents contracted the disease:
…when she was 15, she learnt that her father had Aids. She and her sister went to visit him for Christmas, but he was rushed into hospital with pneumonia as soon as they arrived and died soon afterwards…The loss of her father was worsened by the fact that she couldn’t confide in anyone - at school, she said he had cancer.
“There was such a stigma attached to it (this was 1990) that people knowing he had Aids would overshadow the fact that he was dying and that was the most important thing that I wanted to communicate - that my father was being taken away from me.”*
That’s one of the major reasons I wrote the chapter “Silent Panic” in Families Like Mine. I wanted to validate that shared experience that some many sons and daughters experienced in isolation. Those who have lost fathers to AIDS talk about how scary it was to deal with the loss and not be able to talk to friends about it, or even unsure which adults they could trust. Many talk about how emotionally draining it still is to deal with people’s reactions to the cause of death, which completely derails the point of the conversation at the moment — in Ana’s case, the point is that she misses her dad or that she wants to share something she remembers about him, not necessarily related to AIDS.
In observation of World AIDS Day, (December 1) I want to honor parents who have died of AIDS by posting their names here. Please contact me if you want your parent/s name/s included. You can also share a few sentences you would like to share with readers of this blog, as well as a mention of any organizations that address AIDS/HIV that you are involved with or support financially so I can spread the word of their good work.
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* The rest of the article (which covers much more than her father’s death) is here:
Life’s a drag
by Lynn Barber
Guardian Unlimited / Observer
Sunday November 26, 2006