I read the dates of life spans, and titles, and careers and dreams crushed. Soaring spirits and just plain people. And I had to wonder what it all meant. As I understand it, the Psalmist was letting us know that all of life is in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. We're all in the valley, bound on one side by birth and on the other side by death.
Life is the journey in the Valley in between.
So if the Quilt represents the life we all lead, the lives of the people whose blood calls out to us from the ground, was mixing with the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who walked on that holy ground of the Quilt, who were hearing the cries of that blood. Before reacting to the cry of Abel's blood, God asked Cain where Abel was. Cain was responsible for Abel's death and claimed no such responsibility. He assumed a negative answer to his question. We're not responsible for thousands and thousands of these AIDS-related deaths, yet we can only accept that we do bear responsibility.