My Family Kept My Dad's Secret For Years. I Wasn't Prepared For What Telling The Truth Would Mean.

Family secrets are nothing new.

It’s safe to say that almost every family has probably hidden something from others, and maybe even one another, out of fear, shame, self-protection or even love. Not everyone feels the press of those reasons so acutely that the silence threaded into the secret-keeping lingers long after the secret has been revealed and becomes a crushing burden, eventually too difficult to carry.

But I did.

In 1985, when I was just 13 years old, my 42-year-old surgeon father underwent a quadruple bypass after suffering a heart attack. Eight months later, he received the news that the transfused blood he’d been given during surgery was contaminated with HIV and he’d contracted the virus.

Almost 40 years later, those who contract HIV can live long, healthy lives with the help of medication. But in 1985, being diagnosed with the disease was nothing less than catastrophic — a nearly certain death sentence.

AIDS was still a mystery back then. Misinformation, ignorance, bigotry and stigma fueled people’s views. We lived in a frightened society — one that largely believed people diagnosed with HIV were responsible for their own infection.

In a feature piece in the fall of 1985, Time magazine called people with AIDS “The New Untouchables.” Inconsistent and conflicting messages about how HIV spread made people afraid to even come into contact with someone infected with the virus. Many individuals known to be HIV positive or to have AIDS lost their jobs, their homes and the support of their friends and neighbors.

Making matters worse were members of the evangelical Christian right who were among the loudest voices about AIDS in the 1980s and early ’90s, claiming it was a weapon of God’s wrath. Jerry Falwell, an