All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [142]
Melchor told me that his own mother had died when he was nine days old, and he treasured his wife, that he’d protect her with his life and would never leave her, in sickness, health, good times, hard times, you name it.… He was obviously a kind man, and he was going to be a wonderful father. He testified to the toll AIDS has taken on men as well as women in poor countries. Men see themselves as protectors, but they are helpless to keep their families safe from AIDS if they don’t have the knowledge to do so. Men as well as women need to be empowered with the tools to fight the pandemic.
I told my new friend that I had an appointment to meet the president of Guatemala tomorrow to discuss HIV/AIDS. When I asked what message he’d have me give the president, Melchor spoke with vigor about the urgent need for sex education at home and in schools. His spiel was as articulate as any printed NGO material I’d ever seen. I told him he was an activist and encouraged him to continue to use his voice.
However good an advocate I was becoming, I lamented that it was I, and not he, who had an appointment with his president. The world will be more just, more right, when it is Melchor and his wife, and not an American movie star, who has such access, who can tell their stories to the elected officials who represent them.
The next morning, I was told, a beautiful sweet-faced baby daughter named Milche Guadalupe was delivered without complication. Because she couldn’t be tested for HIV for eighteen months, I will never know her status. As with so many others whose lives have touched mine, I can only pray and turn Milche and her parents over to the care of a loving God.
As I prepared to say my goodbyes to the Maryknoll sisters, I started to feel a lot of pain well up in me. The suffering I had witnessed was all so unnecessary, so preventable. When I asked Dee and Marlene how they managed to keep up their hope, they both spoke of the need to stay grounded in one’s faith, one’s personal connection to God. I understood that, of course, but on this day I felt the need to grieve, too, for all that had been destroyed, for all that had been suffered, for all who died so unnecessarily, so traumatically, in poverty, often without dignity.
Yes, I knew all about the need for education, that ignorance is the enemy, that the empowerment of any single individual sparks a miniature revolution. But the injustice of it all made me want to rage and scream and cry. I usually didn’t start to feel this way until a few days into a trip, and I wondered why it had happened so quickly this time. The fear I had felt that morning had already traveled into anger. I had to ride it out and hope I could process the anger and come out on the good side of its gifts: energy, strength, and motivation. It was either that or I’d be up again all night with that awful anxiety in my chest.
Luckily, an important ally and dear friend was arriving later that evening to help me on the journey.
I was already in bed and reading through the daunting itinerary for the rest of the week when I heard Salma Hayek’s voice in the hallway. I could not restrain myself from jumping up to greet her, so I pulled on a robe and ran down the hotel hallway to her room, ending up on her bed and talking half the night. It’s like that when we see each other: With both of us as busy as we are (and as much as I had isolated myself in recent years), we always have much catching up to do. I wish I had a nickel for each time I said, “Oh, this is the last thing I’ll say, then I’ll go to bed!” It was a lesson to reach out more, not to let it all pile up.
The next morning, Salma and I had a discussion about what to wear during the week. I refrain from trying to pass myself off as a business-person or someone in the UN or whatever on these trips.