From story to commitment: Sarah's starting point
When 18-year-old Sarah Bonzon begins a school project on life stories, she immediately thinks of her grandmother, Antonia, whom she calls Mamita. She vaguely knows that Antonia accompanied people living with HIV, that she knew SID'Action (a Lausanne-based organization that no longer exists), but all of this remains distant, almost abstract.

It's her father – himself indirectly involved in this care through memory work he did in his youth, and through his mother's commitment – who encourages her to explore this path.

Then everything becomes clear when Mamita opens her boxes of memories: photos, books, archives, images of quilts, ceremonies, faces. A whole world unfolds.

"She gave me everything," Sarah recounts. "That's when I really started to get interested in the subject, to feel involved."

Antonia: twenty years of accompaniment, a life transformed and transforming
Antonia, for her part, didn't think she still had much to tell. "I accompanied people for twenty years," she says. "And I still do. There's someone I've been seeing for thirty-six years."

A survivor, she says admiringly: a 70-year-old woman who went through the harshest treatments, comorbidities, loneliness.

Antonia's story begins almost by chance. A colleague returns from the United States, HIV-positive. She knows nothing about it. He supported her through a difficult period in her life, so she decides to support him in return. Together they look for a place to talk about HIV. They find SID'Action. They meet the founder, the volunteers, other companions.

Step by step, she gets involved, learns, trains. She joins the work around the quilts, those large memorial panels sewn in memory of people who have died.

And then she meets "extraordinary" people, she says. Some for only a few weeks. Far too little time. She opens her home: brunches, meals, evenings. "Everyone was included, like the children." It was normal. It was life.

From Sarah to Mamita: "I admire you so much"
At first, Sarah doesn't grasp the scale of her grandmother's commitment. "I knew she had accompanied people, but not to what extent," she says.

Over the months, she discovers. She listens. She looks at the photos. She puts faces to the stories. She understands the emotional weight, the strength, the tenacity. With great humility, Antonia seems almost embarrassed by the admiration she generates in her granddaughter.

Sarah also discovers the zones of silence, what was no longer talked about, what hurt too much. And without realizing it, she receives something:
– a memory;
– a responsibility;
– a new outlook on HIV, far from prejudice and fear, rooted in a fundamentally humanist perspective.

A family legacy, visible and invisible
Antonia's caregiving shaped her family, sometimes without her even realizing it.

Her daughter and son – Sarah's father – grew up in a home where people living with HIV came to eat, laugh, exist.

He later went on to work himself with troubled youth, with people marginalized by society.

"I think that kindness comes from there too," says Sarah.

As for her, this project transformed her: "I'm a bit different from who I was before. I want to do something at my own scale, to pass it on, to take away the drama, to show the reality."

This is where the legacy lies: a transmission that is sometimes silent, but deeply active.

The weight of silence and the reality of stigma
Both Antonia and Sarah say it: stigma continues. More subtly than before, but just as real.

Antonia sees isolated people, unable to talk about their life with HIV, even in settings where they should feel safe.

Sarah observes persistent prejudices, even among young people: "We're not very informed, and we don't talk about how people living with HIV are perceived, or about stigma."

The taboo weighs heavily. It prevents speech, encounter, solidarity. It fuels massive loneliness.

Remembering: a duty for today
For Antonia, the duty to remember is essential: "It's important for families, for society, so we don't forget, and there's so much to learn."

Sarah adds: "The people who passed away had dreams, lives. If only for them, we must remember. But also for those living with HIV today, in a different medical reality but still with the fear of rejection."

Conclusion: making family, making legacy
This family story shows that we don't only inherit material possessions. We inherit values, perspectives, commitments. We inherit the struggles of previous generations. We also inherit their silences, their wounds, their strengths.

In her own way, Sarah continues this story. She received it. She carries it. She passes it on in turn.

That is what legacy is: a thread stretched between generations, fragile but tenacious, that connects us to one another and reminds us that, faced with HIV as with so many other challenges, we move forward together, even if we aren't directly affected.