I read “Tuesdays with Morrie” some time ago about a former student visiting his professor who was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).

For the last six months I’ve been visiting a friend in hospital dying from AIDS on Saturdays after lunch. It became a routine: bike ride, market, Rudy. There is little that is honourable, decent or dignifying about AIDS and watching the slow deterioration in this friend has been agonising.

Like in the story, I enjoyed immensely the time we had together, even though Rudy was no philosophiser on life. His face would light up when he saw me, he’d whinge and complain about family members to me in confidence and we’d go downstairs in his wheelchair so he could smoke away to his heart’s content. Yes I took him – why should he have been denied a few simple joys in his last months? A nip of Baileys and a good dose of chocolate were our other great shared joys. Read more

I visited a friend in hospital on Saturday who has AIDS. Since my last visit he’d had a rough week – vomiting up all his food. He looked even more gaunt and skinny, if that’s possible.

I’d taken in some prints of my work as he’d expressed an interest last week to see some of my photography. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare anything – just took in a few of my calendars, cards and old prints that were lying around.

Somehow in that pile of images were some really great, colourful shots that brought a smile to his lips. He particularly loved any of the images of India and my parents hiking in New Zealand.

I’ve included some of the images in this list of shots that I showed him and I dedicate all of them to Rudy and the 33.4 million people living worldwide with HIV/AIDS.

Hiking the Key Summit track, Routeburn, New Zealand

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