He Was Ill, but Unlike Many, Not Alone : Mario once told me the only time he could see was in his dreams.

Something sad happened last week.

I was preparing my Christmas column, checking in with some of the people I had met during the year. One of my first calls was to Mario Ceremano, a Sun Valley resident whose world, once vibrant with the color of roses, had turned to utter darkness. Mario’s blindness was the result of a common AIDS-related infection known as CMV retinitis.

When I called Wednesday, his mother answered. Julia Ceremano explained that she had his calls transferred, that now Mario was back home with his parents in Shadow Hills. He was too weak to take calls, she said. This surprised me. When I met Mario in August, he told me that, apart from CMV retinitis, medications seemed to be keeping other infections at bay.

“I brought him home in October,” his mother said. “I just emptied out my back room and got the hospital bed, and he’s come home to die.”

Her candor surprised me, though I didn’t say so. Her candor surprised others as well. “They say, ‘Don’t say that! Don’t say that!’ ” But Julia Ceremano, who is 73, worked more than 40 years as a registered nurse, and she knows that positive thinking, like life itself, has its limits. “Right now,” she added, “I try to keep strong for my husband and my daughter.”

I offered awkward condolences and asked her to give Mario my best wishes. And, employing euphemisms that Mrs. Ceremano would shun, I asked her to keep me informed.

Two days later, on the eve of Christmas Eve, she called at about 20 minutes past noon.

“Mario died this morning, at about 10:30,” she told me, her tone subdued. “He just went off to sleep.”

Mario once told me the only time he could see was in his dreams.

*

Mario Ceremano, 40, grew up in Shadow Hills and attended Polytechnic High School. In his late teens, he figured out he was gay. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Mario frequented L.A.’s gay discos. Some relationships lasted for years, but in the end there was no, as the phrase goes, “long-term companion.”

Mario worked as a licensed vocational nurse in board-and-care homes for the aged and infirm, but dreamed of opening an antiques shop filled with the Limoges china he could never afford. Mario was something of an eccentric.

In his living room, he displayed his extraordinary collection of Betty Boop knickknacks and several photos of actress Elizabeth Montgomery, best known as the good-witch housewife of “Bewitched.” Mario didn’t know why he was such a fan, but he seemed star-struck, recalling the time he got to meet her--such a big star, so friendly and down to Earth.

His property, front and back, was graced with more than 25 rosebushes that Mario had planted and cared for himself before his eyes began to fail him. One day after learning he had HIV, Mario told me, he clipped dozens of roses and didn’t know what to do with them. Then he read that singer Minnie Riperton, a soaring talent who died young, was buried at Westwood Memorial Park. Mario loved her voice and decided that the roses would be for Minnie. It became a ritual. He would deliver his flowers and sit near her marker--and just think. He would later arrange to have his ashes interred at Westwood Memorial.

All of this was described in the column. Before long, I received a call from Minnie Riperton’s widower, a music producer. More than once he had seen the roses at her marker and had wondered who brought them. He wanted to call Mario, if only to thank him. And he did. Mario was pleased.

Mario had hoped that his story would help people better understand AIDS and blindness. He wanted people to know about the Center for the Partially Sighted, a Santa Monica-based agency that provided equipment and training to help him live as independently as possible.

Sometimes, Mario would demonstrate a sardonic wit, but often he was glum. He was not at all like my friend the late Linda Luschei. She was an upbeat, triumph-of-the-spirit sort who founded an HIV-awareness group for women several years after being infected by her late husband. And Mario didn’t exhibit the anger that energizes groups such as ACT UP.

Mario, I suspect, was more typical.

*

The first time we talked, Julia Ceremano let me know that she was bothered by something in my Thanksgiving column. I had revisited Bob Horn, a former Cal State Northridge professor who has been paralyzed by Lou Gehrig’s disease and survives with the aid of a mechanical lung. In a letter, Bob said he was moved by “the blind fellow.” Given Bob’s own circumstances, it was easy to understand why, as he put it, “I was intrigued by his feeling of isolation.”

Mario had told me he found loneliness to be a byproduct of blindness. He would have visitors--he could hear them and touch them--yet because he could not see them he would feel alone.

Thanksgiving Day this year happened to be Mario’s 40th birthday. When Mrs. Ceremano read the words, it troubled her that people might think her son felt isolated.

“He’s surrounded by his loved ones,” she told me two days before his death. “There are so many who have nobody.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Calif. 91311. Please include a phone number. Address TimesLink or Prodigy e-mail to YQTU59A ( via the Internet: YQTU59A@prodigy.com).

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