The House of Mercy’s annual Walk for AIDS raises funds to help program recipients live with HIV/AIDS and works to combat the stigma still associated with the disease.BELMONT — More than 40 supporters gathered April 18 at the House of Mercy on the Sisters of Mercy campus for the 31st annual Walk for AIDS.
Founded by the sisters in 1991, the House of Mercy responded to the AIDS crisis when many were stigmatized and abandoned – providing housing, respite and dignified care without judgment.
The six-room home still delivers wrap-around services for residents and others living with HIV/AIDS, but thanks to medical advances, staff and volunteers are now focused on teaching clients to lead relatively normal lives.
“This walk is about how we get to be individuals that lift the community up and fight against discrimination,” President Latoya Gardner said. “We carry the names of those we lost in our hearts. We carry the hope of those still fighting. Let’s walk together for a future where everyone living with HIV has a place to call home and a community that loves them.”
Oratorian Father Charles Tupta, pastor of All Saints Church in Lake Wylie, South Carolina, started the walk with a prayer and shared his experience as a chaplain at Rush Presbyterian Medical Center in Chicago when the AIDS epidemic emerged.
“Their families would disown them,” Father Tupta recalled. “A lot of times when they passed, no one came to claim the body, and there was really nothing medically that could be done at the time.”
Father Tupta walks for former patients like Joel, whose last breaths were made trying to reconcile with his estranged father, who in return told Joel that God did not love him.
That day still brings tears to Father Tupta’s eyes. “He said to me, ‘I will never stop loving my father. I had trouble figuring all this out, so how could I expect him to? … I know that God loves me because God does not make junk.’”
Other participants shed tears looking back at a history that didn’t treat their loved ones with the respect they deserved.
Gardner got involved after the death of her brother, who died from AIDS but mentally declined long before that.
“Technically he passed from an AIDS-related illness, but it was the stigma and discrimination that killed him before anything else,” Gardner said. “My brother was 21 when he passed away because he could not foresee living a life where people knew about his illness and treated him differently.”
Though dying from AIDS is less common now due to pharmaceuticals that suppress the virus to the point that it is undetectable, the stigma lingers.
This was the case for Mercy resident Kurt (last name withheld for privacy), who found out he had full-blown AIDS after a doctor’s visit for a small rash last August. The diagnosis sent him spiraling into depression, leaving him homeless, hopeless and lonely with nowhere to go. He didn’t want to tell his family about his condition, so he suffered quietly with his secret.
“This place means a lot because I was not in a good spot,” Kurt said. “They were here to help me, and they actually cared.”
Through it all he still rests in his faith, he said. “I grew up in the Church, and I know He wouldn’t put on me more than I can handle. I pray all the time.”
Former resident Robert (last name withheld for privacy) still volunteers and attends every fundraiser. He recalls how his year’s stay at the House of Mercy rescued him from both sickness and homelessness.
“When you have HIV, you get so consumed with medication and taking care of yourself that sometimes you forget to take care of yourself financially,” Robert said. “When I got here, I learned how to live with the virus, not just medication-wise, but day-to-day. If it wasn’t for the House of Mercy, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
Such progress is possible due to staff such as Kimberly Hunter, a parishioner of St. James the Greater in Concord whose nephew died from anxiety the disease caused.
“If Jason would have had a House of Mercy, everything would have been so different. He wouldn’t have been depressed, hungry and living on the streets. This is something I never want to happen to anyone else,” Hunter said. “I feel like I was led here. I love what we do. We can’t save everyone, but we can help people get better, get them undetectable and help them see the future, which is what Jason didn’t see.”
For staff, volunteers, participants and residents, a future without AIDS may soon be possible, but for now, they will continue walking toward a stigma-free community.
“We aren’t just providing housing,” Gardner said. “We are providing a sanctuary and a community where our residents are seen as people, not just a diagnosis.”
— Lisa M. Geraci
More online
At www.thehouseofmercy.org: Get help or support the House of Mercy in its mission