Joel Rothschild, author of Signals. Photo: ©Isaac Hernandez/IsaacHernandez.com

About ten years ago, I photographed Joel Rothschild, author of “Signals: An Inspiring Story of Life After Life.” I found Signals a fascinating read, not only because of the beauty of the story, but for the content. I loved it even before I read Elizabeth Taylor’s recommendation: “I will treasure Signals always…it’s written from the heart.”

What I found most moving was my own realization of what it must be to live in a world where all your friends are dying of AIDS. That’s what happened to Joel. His lover contacted him from the After Life, as he had promised, in different ways. One of the ways he would show up is as a hummingbird. Once, even though hummingbirds don’t fly after the sun has gone down, one of these beautiful birds came to him on a full moon night.

I was so moved by the story that I gave the book to some friends who had just lost their mother. They both read it in a day; they couldn’t put it down, just like I couldn’t. That week, while talking to each other on the phone one morning, one said to the other, “You’re not going to believe it, sister, there’s a hummingbird flying right in front of me, looking straight into my eyes.” The sister was shocked, “Oh my God! There’s a hummingbird flying right in front of me as well.” It was the spirit of their mom.

Isaac Hernandez Herrero. Thinking of Eric Rothschild. Oil pastel on paper. ©2010 Isaac Hernandez/IsaacArt.com

So I made Joel a small oil pastel drawing of a hummingbird and the moon, which I gave to him weeks after our photo shoot. This past Monday I was driven to draw a hummingbird with a full moon. If I remember correctly, the first hummingbird I painted was not flying in front of the moon, and the planet was green, not white. I’ll have to ask Joel to take a picture of the painting for me.

Since meeting Joel, I’ve got to know other people who lost many friends during the eighties to AIDS. While in the US, you may not hear about many people dying from AIDS anymore, in many countries there are people going through what Joel went through, losing their loved ones at an alarming rate.

December 1st is World AIDS Day, when we remember the more than 27 million people who have died from HIV infection. There are more than 33 million people still infected with HIV in the world, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. You can turn your world red in solidarity or make a donation to an organization like the International Medical Corps or Doctors Without Borders.