Woman conquers pain to give babies love
BABIES from page 1 -
intensity because the pain is so great,” she said.
“But life has meaning, and our fears go away
when we find something that is more impor
tant to us than our life itself.
“It becomes an absolute privilege to share
their lives.”
Anon and a newspaper
Ann Thylor’s ministry of taking in HIV
positive babies began in 1985, when she and
her sister took a “fat cat” Christmas shopping
trip to Mexico City. Five full days and six
overstuffed bags into the splurge, Thylor was
ready to return to Atlanta, where she lived at
the time.
While she was lugging her shopping bags
to airport customs, a little nun, half Thy lor’s
size, kept picking up Thy lor’s bags and mov
ing than for ha. Thylor insisted she could do
it herself, but the nun continued to help ha.
When the flight landed, she found the nun
and asked why she had picked up ha suitcases
and carried her burdens when she could have
done it herself. The nun replied: “God has given
me the privilege of caring for the children of
the world, and, today, you were my child.”
Thylor said, “When you have one of those
defining moments, it never goes away.”
The moment stayed with her until she
picked up a copy of the Atlanta Journal-Con
stitution in 1987 that reported the plight of
AIDS babies people feared so much they were
left to die in the hospital.
1 read aoout tnose cmidren tnat nooody in
the world wanted,” Thylor, who has three grown
children of her own, said. “Something inside
me said that no child should ever live — be
bom, live and die — without a family.”
Taylor said she was aware of the AIDS epi
demic and how it was transmitted because she
had worked as an administrator for a large art
agency, and the arts community, she said, was
hard-hit early on.
Taylor decided the AIDS babies were the
children it would be her privilege to care for
— remembering the nun who cared for her in
the airport — and she became one of the first
in the nation to volunteer to care for children
infected with the virus.
With no.previous foster care experience, she
went to the hospital to ask about taking in the
babies. She said social workers were skeptical
and thought they had found a flash-in-the-pan
do-gooder.
“They thought ‘She’s going to last about 15
minutes,’ but when nobody’s volunteering,
they’re not going to turn you down.”
In the beginning
Before Jake came along, there were others.
The first baby Thylor was to take home died
before they could leave the hospital. The sec
ond was Annie. Thylor brought her home in
1987. She was 6 months old.
Annie, exhausted from living in a hospital
room with other babies, nurses and machines
her whole life, slept for nearly two weeks
straight after leaving the hospital.
Annie’s two-week rest got her off to a good
atart:
Today she is 10 and lives in Atlanta with a judge
who adopted her.
h In 1988, Taylor took in another baby, Ja
son. He was not ready for a peaceful two-week
Photo courtesy op Ann Taylor
AUH0U6H JAKE speat 11 af Mi 14 Maths h
the hespltal, Tayler saM ha was always a
saMUei, happy babyi She attracted his sadles
te the fact that ‘Iw eater epeaed his eyas
u
I deal with the joy. I
deal with focusing
on the child rather
than focusing on
‘Oh dear, am I going
to be miserable ?’
because the answer
is ‘of course.’”
AIDS foster mother
nap. Just a week old when Thylor got him, he
was bom with a drug addiction on top of HIV.
His mother had shot up two hours before he
was bom and had in her system what Thylor
calls “drug du jour,” a mixture of crack cocaine,
heroin and alcohol.
Jason could not sleep for more than 15 min
utes for the first weeks of his life.
“I always said, ‘If you want to know where
the action is in Atlanta, come to our house,
because we rock around the clock,”’ Taylor said.
She would hold Annie in the crook of one
arm and Jason in the other while nursing him
through withdrawal.
Her method worked for Jason — he is 9
years old today, and Taylor has an 18-year con
tract to provide foster care for him. He is one
of the longest-surviving children bom with HIV.
Annie and Jason are the ones who chal
lenged the grim life-expectancy statistics, as
most children bom with HIV die before they
are 5.
These children are living, Taylor said.
“They’re defying the odds. There is hope they’ll
be around.”
Taylor received another baby, Thy, but she
was adopted after Thy lor realized she could not
care for three sick babies at once. She had two
arms for rocking, but not-three, she said* and
drug-addicted babies can be difficult and irri
table.
Taylor opened her arms again in 1988 for
Jake. Thylor especially wanted to be his foster
mother because he was Annie’s half brother.
Jake, unlike his half sister and foster brother,
did not defy the odds.
“We watched every season change; every
single holiday we seemed to be in the hospi
tal,” Thylor said. Eleven out of Jake’s 14 months
of life were spent in a hospital.
Despite his long hospital chart, Thylor was
still not prepared for his death when it came
—because she focused on his life.
“The feet that they may not be able to live
very long is so horrifying that I have to put
that aside,” she said. “I dead with the joy. I deal
with focusing on the child rather than focus
ing on ‘Oh dear, am I going to be miserable?'
because the answer is ‘of course.'
“The focus has to be on the child.”
So Thylor tried to pack in as much love and
as many experiences as she could into Jake’s
short life.
The obituary of a baby doesn’t read much like
that of an adult There are no college degrees to
be listed, no list of awards or accomplishments.
The memories of Jake, however, are still
there. He always kept his right index finger
pointed out, and he was buried that way. He
got to go on one boat ride. He got to have his
first haircut.
He never got to eat food or suck a bottle
because he was too sick. He was always a happy,
smiling baby, He was dressed as Superman for
his one and only Halloween; the shirt from his
Superman costume is now stitched on his patch
of the AIDS quilt with stitching that reads “Jake
... you can fly now.”
The ‘terrorist attack’
One would think that someone who is los
ing a family member to AIDS would learn to
expect death. Not so, Thylar said.
“Over and over, it was like waiting for a
terrorist attack,” she said. “We would have to
deal with something major, and then he would
pull through again and every time something
happened, it was just this hope eternal that we
were truly going to make it.
“When the time actually came, it was like a
shock.”
Thylor had spent the whole night up with
Jake, and a friend had come to the hospital to
visit. Thylor was putting on her makeup in the
hospital room while her friend played with Jake.
She heard the heart monitor stop, whirled
Photo courtesy of Ann Taylor
JUNE, JASON AND JAKE wear their Halleweea cestnes. The Sapermae eablea Iren Jake’s
•etflt is aew sewe M|hyim<nhiAPIS paill when the stltchlag reads “Jake...Yeu caa fly
ii
Something inside me said that no child
should ever live — be bom, live and die
— without a family.”
AIDS foster mother
around, and Jake was dead before she could
make it to his bed.
“It becomes so etched in your memory,” she
said.
No time for the pain
Thylor said she had a huge support system.
She and Jake had been in the news a lot because
she was one of die first to take in AIDS babies,
was a prominent Atlanta resident and had done
public speaking on AIDS. By the time she got
home from the hospital after Jake’s death, re
porters were waiting for her at her doorstep.
Jake’s funeral was well attended, Ihylor
said, because his was the first face many had
connected with the statistics.
But despite all the support, she said, her
grief was “atrocious.” Pain stemmed from the
inability to stop the disease and inability to have
Jake back.
“There was a sense of, ‘Wait a minute! This
child was wounded in the womb, and we’ve
got to do something to stop it.’
“But mainly, it was just the sheer love of
that (me little Ufe.”
She admits she didn’t deal with grief in the
way she should have.
Although she was exhausted from grabbing
just a few hours of sleep each night while tak
ing care of Jake, she kept a hectic speaking
schedule with stops across the nation.
She became obsessed with Jason’s health,
transferring the energy she had spent on Jake
to another child.
“I was ready to go any place in the world
anything new was being tried,” Thylor said.
“Had I heard they were grinding up eagles in
India, I would have been there if it would work.”
But Thylor said her grieving process was
actually typical.
“If you haven’t been through it, you don’t
know how to do it very well,” she said.
Annie was adopted after Jake’s death. Ihy
lor visited Nebraska, fell in love with the state,
and took a consulting job at the Norfolk Arts
' Center. Because she wants Jason to have a nor
mal childhood, Thylor says she can’t seek out
people in whom she can confide.
“To lose someone to HIV, you live a clos
eted life,” Taylor said. “If the child had leuke
mia, or sane other disease, you could go to grief
support groups.
“But because the fear factor is so great, I
don’t feel that I can jeopardize Jason by going
to those groups. It’s a very lonely disease.”
Years gone by
In tithe, Taylor took in another child. Devin
was HIV-positive at birth, but at the age of 2
he tested negative for the virus, which some
times happens when HIV-positive children de
velop their own immune system.
Seven years after Jake’s death, Thylor says
she’s finally ready to give up his patch of the
AIDS quilt to have it sewn on with all the oth
ers. She remembers his life — and death —
with a content smile.
“He died healthy every way — mentally,
spiritually, socially,” she said. “His little body
just gave out.
“The reason I believe that is true is because
he never opened his eyes without somebody
there loving him.”
Feelings of grief are being replaced by
dreams not only for Devin but fa1 Jason as well.
“My dream and my hope is that the time
will come that (AIDS) can be managed just like
diabetes or any other chronic illness,” Thylor
said. “I am permitting myself to hope and
dream that (Jason) will grow up.”
But if plans go awry—be it failures in her
health or his — it’s OK, she said. Thylor said
in the center of tumultuous anger, fear, frustra
tion and depression from dealing with her
child’s HIV infectioi is a core of peace, be
cause she has sure knowledge she’s done a bit
for the world.
“These little lives, these children who were
bon into horrible situations, they’ve had won
derful lives,” she said. “That’s a blessing.”