BOY'S DEATH BROUGHT A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

She was working for the DMV back in '88, giving the eye tests. He came in one day to renew his driver's license.

``Read the bottom line,'' Shevann Blocker said.

``Read it? Heck, I can't even see it,'' Aiden Avila thought, trying to bluff his way through the test.

``Man, you're blind,'' she said, smiling at the young man trying to con her. ``You need glasses.''

And that's how they met. Aiden got his glasses, but before that, he got Shevann Blocker's telephone number.

``We'd stay up late talking on the phone about life, finding out about each other, seeing if we were compatible,'' Aiden says Friday from his Sherman Oaks home - taking the day off from his job as an MTA bus driver in Division 5, South Central L.A.

``One night she told me she had two children, and that one of them was sick. I asked what was wrong with him. There was a silence on the line. She finally said, `What he has people are afraid of. He has AIDS.' ''

There was another long pause as Shevann let the words sink in, expecting the same reaction from Aiden she got from most people when she told them about how her 6-year-old son, Troy, contacted AIDS from a blood transfusion at birth - how he was dying.

Gee, they were sorry for the kid, sorry for her. What a tough break. AIDS, huh? Wow, look at the time. Got to be going. We'll talk again later. Much later.

Holding her breath, Shevann Blocker waited for the click, for the line to go dead. It didn't.

``Finally, he said, `Well, I'm still here. I'm not afraid, ain't going anywhere,' '' she said. ``That's when I knew that I could fall in love with this guy, that I could spend the rest of my life with him.

``He took on something not many people would take on.''

Shevann brought Aiden home one weekend, let the boys check him out, make sure he passed muster with them. He did. Pretty soon, Aiden's toothbrush was in the bathroom, his clothes in the closet.

Pretty soon, whenever you saw Aiden, you saw Troy and Aaron, his younger brother. At the park, at the movies, at the store - finally, at the hospital.

``The nights I couldn't stay, he stayed,'' Shevann said. ``Troy never spent one night in the hospital where one of us wasn't at his bedside, holding his hand and trying to ease his pain.''

Troy died in March 1990, when he was 8. Three months later, Aiden Avila proposed marriage to Shevann Blocker. She said ``Yes,'' of course. Along with Aaron, they now have two girls, Maya, 4, and Zoe, 2.

But not a day goes by when the face of the fourth child no longer with them doesn't cross their minds, doesn't make them stop and see the world around them just a little different than most people see it.

You think you know yourself, Aiden Avila says. You think you know what makes you tick, and the kind of person you really are - deep down, where the lies and con jobs can't reach the truth. But you don't, not really.

``The boy made me a man,'' he says. ``Made me a better person, and showed me a compassion for life that I've never seen from anyone, let alone an 8-year-old child.''

During the last months of Troy's life, that last Christmas they shared with the boy, things were a little tight financially for Aiden and Shevann. A nonprofit group called Tuesday's Child heard about it, and made sure there were plenty of toys for the boys under the Christmas tree.

Aiden and Shevann never forgot the kindness. When they got the pain of losing Troy under control, got their emotions back to where they could finally think about the future again, they walked into the offices of Tuesday's Child one day and asked what they could do?

Since then, Shevann has risen through the ranks from volunteer to director of family services, helping every day to ease the pain and fear of other parents with children who have AIDS.

Aiden spends most of the free hours that he's not driving a city bus around L.A. driving AIDS patients to doctors appointments, delivering food, and talking on the telephone with men like himself.

Men who are about to lose children they love to this curse called AIDS.

He tells them that the pain is going to be heavier than anything they have ever felt in their lives, that it will seem like their world is over with.

He'll tell them not to withdraw and stop functioning. To keep fighting and get on with life, help the others coming up behind you with the same pain and loss in their hearts.

Tell them it's all part of this thing an 8-year-old boy named Troy taught him.

Being a man.

MEMO: Dennis McCarthy's column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.