Meet Gert. They call her the

Mother of the AIDS Quilt.

The times I met Gert have impacted me more than she knows; the more she told me about her story, the more the parallelisms of our lives became apparent.

Gert is the only person that has had a hand in sewing each and every panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt since its founding in 1987.

Her mother taught her how to sew before she passed away from cancer when Gert was 9. This gift would end up changing the course of her life and impacting world history. For decades, she has helped preserve, repair, and display The Quilt as it grew to 50,000 Quilts.

What I cherish most about Gert is how comforting she was the first time I was able to finally reunite with my mother’s AIDS Quilt that I helped make when I was 6 years old.

I created her Quilt during the height of the AIDS epidemic without understanding its significance as one of the most powerful political interventions of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. Its significance lay in how it transformed private, stigmatized grief into public protest, forcing the government and the broader public to confront the crisis.

Gert’s love and care comes through in her cadence with every memory she shares; her mind a colorful kaleidoscope of triumph and heartache, her hands a narrative of pain turned into love in action.

I take solace in knowing she has been taking care of my mother’s, and 50,000 others, AIDS Quilts over these past 38 years. Gert has impacted millions of people all over the world and she deserves her flowers. 

💐🌻🌸🪻🌺🌹🌼💐

This is a part of a larger project surrounding my mother’s AIDS diagnosis, the erasure of women diagnosed with AIDS during the epidemic, and my experiences as an AIDS orphan.

If you’ve read this far and are compelled to help make this project a reality, consider contributing to help fund my next trip up to the AIDS Quilt Memorial Headquarters in San Leandro so I can interview Gert, or help fuel my next editing or research session.