“You have Karposi’s sarcoma,” the doctor said. “One of them was on an artery. That caused your trouble. There are 10 to 12 more in there.”

“What does that mean?” his mother said.

He remembers mumbling to his mother, “That is the cancer you get when you have AIDS.”

He and his mother looked at each other. Now the life he never talked about was part of the family album.