The card said, simply, that the grandmother was going to see the father, who lived on an opposing coast, because she needed to spend as much time with him as possible.

Very cryptic, easily taken numerous ways: an old woman's quest to flee loneliness, a family's attempts to stay together, true family love...but the son knew better. This part of his family had never been very keen on any of these notions, at least not in any tangible way.

So as the son read this card, and those lines specifically, he instantly knew that his father had HIV/AIDS. The son declared this without hesitation, and without any doubt. He didn't say it in morbid fascination, or as an attempt at some type of macabre revenge—-hoping the words would carry ill-will to the father—-but rather as a declaration, an epiphany, a confirmation.

He also had said it out loud, as he read the card in front of the Christmas tree, sitting on the floor with the mother looking on from her chair. The son could not quite remember her comment on it, but the mother had somehow relayed the son's realization to the grandmother, in the form of a question.

And this was where the son's suspicions were confirmed...not necessarily about the affliction of the father, but about his state in life. An uncle, the father's brother, virtually immediately called the son and arranged for them to go out, as a late birthday present. In hindsight, this was nothing more than damage control, affected from the opposing coast by the father.

They went to lunch and the movies, talking in inane banter, though the subject eventually--and inevitably--turned towards the father, the card, and the realization.

The uncle stated, quite emphatically, that the father was not sick and did not suffer from that affliction, that the grandmother simply said things without tact at times, that it was her need that prompted the cryptic words...not the father's. Which was all well and good, as the son's realization was out-weighed by the confirmation of the father's 'sexual preference'. Something that the son had known for quite some time, but never dwelled long on or used as a form of judgment.

It was this incredibly crude attempt that made the son lose all hope of conversing with his father. As he grew older, into his 20s, he was fairly certain that he would probably never speak to his father again, save for through 6 feet of earth. He did not decide this, or come to this thought in anger...it too was more of a realization, a realization that the father did not want to talk with the son.