When my only son was sentenced to prison, I had to make a choice and that choice changed my life.
By Susan Creamer Joy - Wednesday 07 Sep 2011
In a little while my youngest daughter and I will make the hour and a half drive to a small Kansas town and to a modest, slightly antiquated jail to visit my only son; her only brother. He has been housed at this particular detention center for just under three months, although he has also been a resident at two other facilities since initial his arrest in early December. In our limited conversations with one another we agree that so far, this one has been the worst.
I have groomed my outer sensibility to adjust to our visits, such as they are in these dim and claustrophobic places and have even tried to acquire a sense of humor about the situation to help ameliorate the raw reality that begs my attention but then mocks my attempts to sustain it.
As I sit in the waiting area beneath the high front window where the visitors of inmates must sign in and relinquish their driver’s license or I.D.s, I can look through the glass partition past the bored and mechanical movements of the officer on duty and scan the black and white security monitors that canvass the various sections of the facility. I do this every time hoping to catch a candid glimpse of my son as he moves among the caged populace. I want to see if he is smiling or laughing, perhaps, or whether he is in conversation with anyone. I want to make sure he is not alone.
He is a very large young man standing nearly 6 foot 6 inches and weighing well over 300 pounds, so I comfort myself with the thought that certainly his size alone will help keep him safe. I purposely don’t make an effort to find out visually if I am wrong.
In spite of his physically mammoth frame picking him out from a grainy image among a dozen or so identically clad men is more difficult than one would think, and when I finally see him we joke that far from the illusion of making him appear even larger, those horizontal stripes tend to have the opposite effect. In this jungle that uniform is camouflage. In this jungle he disappears.
I have been making these journeys to various facilities for three years now with the exception of one short, yearlong respite between his first 18 months of incarceration and his current term.
As an addict to prescription pain medication, he cannot seem to quiet his accelerated cravings nor stem the rampaging voices within him that tell him he is no good in this world just as he is, so that before too long he is back in the crooked and loudly mad game of prescription fraud; outwardly hoping he will not get caught, silently praying he will.
I now know far more about the conditions and protocols of detention centers and correctional facilities than I ever wanted or believed I would know.
I know that when someone you love with all of your being is locked inside, you also reside there.
I know that when you are looking through bulletproof glass into the eyes you have known since birth and yet are unable to touch the hand, the face or to feel the faint trace of mottled air against your cheek after a son’s kiss, holes are rent in your soul that applied optimism cannot repair.
I know that people judge, that in spite of themselves they cannot seem to overcome the grimy prejudice, which falsely informs them that those labeled criminal or those who heave in the belly of iniquitous delusion are immured by a mendacity only God can forgive; and, therefore, they do not have to.
I know that the guilt of the sinner is distributed among his loved ones like boxed meals of sorrow to be eaten without shame and carried without complaint; a sacrificial supplication.
Yet I also know that within reach lies the best admonition, the one that begs saints and sinners alike to put aside all judgment and to disband the pretentious belief that in order to get to what is holy and good in this world one must be perfectly holy and good; that one must live only among the blessed and serve the meek.
Too often I have seen the hollow eyes of ignorance as I move between the common practice of moral living and the disturbing impenitence of those who share with my son the stagnant air of hard consequence in these inhospitable pens; and I have made the grave discovery that the barbed and self-righteous appraisals of who is just and who, condemned, are far more abundant outside of the prison walls.
I do not fear the gaze from those others sitting alongside me in the concrete portal of this sad institution as we await our 15 minutes of feigned happiness with our sons, daughters, husbands and fathers. We greet each other in the subdued and humbled voices of the exposed. Why we are there is never questioned. How we will survive the ride home always is, but we don’t speak of that. It is rare that we speak at all.
And so today I am making the long drive against the flat landscape of the Kansas plains and against the acceptance that I will be making many more of these sodden trips for an indeterminate period of time. My son had court this morning and rather than being remanded to the intensive, long-term inmate rehabilitation program as was recommended by two other courts, he was sentenced to prison.
In late August he turned 28-years old. I will not know him again as a free man until he is well into his 30s. This black reality feeds that portion of my heart which has now become the dominant receptacle for the guilt, remorse and discordant products of my own failures and its constant howls drive me to consider the possibility that I deserve this shame. Nevertheless, I know I have a choice, and I know that there is a weighted measure of redemption here in spite of the staggering burden of hope denied and it comes in the form of dignity.
To find within myself that thin offering of grace as it evolves within the purgative splendor of deep grief is crucial and is the determinant factor of a life well lived.
To recognize the inherent perfection of every soul on earth and refrain from judgment actualizes this principle.
To forgive is imperative and necessarily unceasing.
To know these things and to live by them liberates everyone no matter which side of the penitentiary walls they walk.
Today will be hard but not allowing myself to become transformed by my part in this dark journey would be the real shame. For no matter how shackled any of us seem to be by circumstance or by consequence, in actuality, we are only truly sentenced if we choose to give up.
I have groomed my outer sensibility to adjust to our visits, such as they are in these dim and claustrophobic places and have even tried to acquire a sense of humor about the situation to help ameliorate the raw reality that begs my attention but then mocks my attempts to sustain it.
As I sit in the waiting area beneath the high front window where the visitors of inmates must sign in and relinquish their driver’s license or I.D.s, I can look through the glass partition past the bored and mechanical movements of the officer on duty and scan the black and white security monitors that canvass the various sections of the facility. I do this every time hoping to catch a candid glimpse of my son as he moves among the caged populace. I want to see if he is smiling or laughing, perhaps, or whether he is in conversation with anyone. I want to make sure he is not alone.
He is a very large young man standing nearly 6 foot 6 inches and weighing well over 300 pounds, so I comfort myself with the thought that certainly his size alone will help keep him safe. I purposely don’t make an effort to find out visually if I am wrong.
In spite of his physically mammoth frame picking him out from a grainy image among a dozen or so identically clad men is more difficult than one would think, and when I finally see him we joke that far from the illusion of making him appear even larger, those horizontal stripes tend to have the opposite effect. In this jungle that uniform is camouflage. In this jungle he disappears.
I have been making these journeys to various facilities for three years now with the exception of one short, yearlong respite between his first 18 months of incarceration and his current term.
As an addict to prescription pain medication, he cannot seem to quiet his accelerated cravings nor stem the rampaging voices within him that tell him he is no good in this world just as he is, so that before too long he is back in the crooked and loudly mad game of prescription fraud; outwardly hoping he will not get caught, silently praying he will.
I now know far more about the conditions and protocols of detention centers and correctional facilities than I ever wanted or believed I would know.
I know that when someone you love with all of your being is locked inside, you also reside there.
I know that when you are looking through bulletproof glass into the eyes you have known since birth and yet are unable to touch the hand, the face or to feel the faint trace of mottled air against your cheek after a son’s kiss, holes are rent in your soul that applied optimism cannot repair.
I know that people judge, that in spite of themselves they cannot seem to overcome the grimy prejudice, which falsely informs them that those labeled criminal or those who heave in the belly of iniquitous delusion are immured by a mendacity only God can forgive; and, therefore, they do not have to.
I know that the guilt of the sinner is distributed among his loved ones like boxed meals of sorrow to be eaten without shame and carried without complaint; a sacrificial supplication.
Yet I also know that within reach lies the best admonition, the one that begs saints and sinners alike to put aside all judgment and to disband the pretentious belief that in order to get to what is holy and good in this world one must be perfectly holy and good; that one must live only among the blessed and serve the meek.
Too often I have seen the hollow eyes of ignorance as I move between the common practice of moral living and the disturbing impenitence of those who share with my son the stagnant air of hard consequence in these inhospitable pens; and I have made the grave discovery that the barbed and self-righteous appraisals of who is just and who, condemned, are far more abundant outside of the prison walls.
I do not fear the gaze from those others sitting alongside me in the concrete portal of this sad institution as we await our 15 minutes of feigned happiness with our sons, daughters, husbands and fathers. We greet each other in the subdued and humbled voices of the exposed. Why we are there is never questioned. How we will survive the ride home always is, but we don’t speak of that. It is rare that we speak at all.
And so today I am making the long drive against the flat landscape of the Kansas plains and against the acceptance that I will be making many more of these sodden trips for an indeterminate period of time. My son had court this morning and rather than being remanded to the intensive, long-term inmate rehabilitation program as was recommended by two other courts, he was sentenced to prison.
In late August he turned 28-years old. I will not know him again as a free man until he is well into his 30s. This black reality feeds that portion of my heart which has now become the dominant receptacle for the guilt, remorse and discordant products of my own failures and its constant howls drive me to consider the possibility that I deserve this shame. Nevertheless, I know I have a choice, and I know that there is a weighted measure of redemption here in spite of the staggering burden of hope denied and it comes in the form of dignity.
To find within myself that thin offering of grace as it evolves within the purgative splendor of deep grief is crucial and is the determinant factor of a life well lived.
To recognize the inherent perfection of every soul on earth and refrain from judgment actualizes this principle.
To forgive is imperative and necessarily unceasing.
To know these things and to live by them liberates everyone no matter which side of the penitentiary walls they walk.
Today will be hard but not allowing myself to become transformed by my part in this dark journey would be the real shame. For no matter how shackled any of us seem to be by circumstance or by consequence, in actuality, we are only truly sentenced if we choose to give up.