Ron had told me the Christmas before that we would be the only two left in our group pretty soon. Neither of us wanted to think about it. By Christmas 1992, it had almost come true.

I didn't deal well at all with the death of my close friends. Branch was particularly difficult for me since I thought of him as my little brother. However, he made decisions about the end of his life that were for his own reasons. He moved in with another friend and didn't really want many of us to see him. We were always together in spirit. He and Michael had been best friends for a long time and they departed this dimension together.

Branch's blood family, who had rejected him completely for being gay and for having AIDS, suddenly showed up on the scene, fighting over his stereo and other belongings. It sickened me to hear of situations like this, but it happened, and a lot more often than most people knew about.

Chris and Richard had become lovers the year before, and they went through the horrors of the disease together. Chris suffered from dementia so badly at the end that once Richard had to come looking for him when he had wandered into the Castro in a diaper. It was so sad. Richard followed him shortly afterwards.

Robin had become boyfriends with Bobby, whose father had been at "The Last Supper." Robin was sometimes sarcastic and flip about his dying, saying things like, "Well, maybe I'll just go home now and get this over with, so no one will have to deal with me like this anymore. I can't stand it, I really should be dead by now." I never knew what to say to remarks like that.

Dean had been my Grand Ma-ma. He was my AA sponsor's sponsor. He was a wiry Arkansas boy transplanted to Texas then to San Francisco. He tried to strangle me once on the corner of 18th and Castro for screaming "Grand Ma-ma!" across the street to him. "Don't you EVER call me that in public again." He was witty and talented and always made me laugh. He left me his electronic keyboard and I made music with it in the following years.

Irv was a big, muscular tattooed guy everyone called Irv-zilla. We always went to bingo together at the Most Holy Redeemer Church basement on Diamond Street. He usually wore his t-shirt that said "STFU" on the front, in small letters above the pocket. When he turned around, it screamed "SHUT THE FUCK UP" on the back. He moved back to Philadelphia to be with his twin brother before the wasting away began. He was outrageous. I couldn't imagine there being a twin.

Terry H. was a leather-daddy. He was irreverent and sexy. He also moved away before he got very sick. Like many others, he didn't want his friends to see what the virus did to him. Or maybe it was like an animal that goes off into the woods. I don't really know. Some people, like Peter, just committed suicide rather than go through any of it.

Ron was there through it all. And I was there for him. We had to believe that everything would be all right. We had to go on.

Ron had had a boyfriend named Richard for about a year. I really liked him. The year before, during the holidays, Richard wanted to bake the kieflies, a flaky cookie filled with preserves and covered in powdered sugar. Ron made them every year and they were always eaten up too quickly. Well, that year, Richard decided to bake enough – so he made 64 dozen! Needless to say, everyone who came over to Ron's during that holiday season took home a box of kieflies. Richard was a very sweet young man. I used to give him haircuts. He got sick and died. He was only 30 years old.

Branch had just turned 25 when he died. Chris was a year or so younger, his Richard barely 35. Michael was in his early 30s. They were all too damned young! I hated it. I hated the virus. These young men lived courageous lives and died clean and sober, knowing that they had the love of a family.

Ron and I would go on living, and we would love and we would laugh and we would cry, and we would stay clean and sober through it all. We were privileged to have known these young men, and they would stay alive in our hearts and memories. Each year at the traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dinner, we would tell the new family members all the stories about our crazy early days with our wonderful, beloved friends. The empty chair at the table was always filled.

In mid-December I met Mark. I guess we were both just ready. I brought him to meet my friends at Ron's Christmas Eve dinner. A new circle had begun. We were carrying on the traditions.

After dinner, Ron would usually play a little fortune-telling game with three cups turned over. Under one was a key, one a coin, and the other a ring. Each person around the table would take turns choosing a cup. Mark and I both got the ring. We laughed. Ron was puzzled by our reaction.

"We're getting married," was my reply. Mark had come into my bedroom one evening with a red rose, laid it on my chest and asked me to marry him. We hadn't known each other too long, but we knew we were destined to be together. We connected on so many levels, we had so much in common. It was definitely the right thing to do. And so our life together began.