I am reading a new book by a father to a son called The Inner Journey Home, and in the introduction, he describes his visit with his
My visit with my son yesterday was very intense. It may have had something to do with my lack of sleep before driving up to see him. Also, my son told me he met someone I grew up with who has been locked up since 1976. When I thought about over thirty years, I also thought about how my son has been locked up since the mid 1990’s. That’s a lot of years already. And there’s a possibility of quite a few more years to go before a chance at parole. Yes, that’s many years behind bars. Many years in a cage.
What shook me was the loss. The loss of freedom. The loss of life for them and their victims. The loss of the future. God knows I was wild growing up. But when a life is taken, you take everything a person has and will ever get. You also surrender everything you have and are ever going to have. Your contact with the outside world, interacting freely with your family and loved ones, is forever limited to a visit (maybe every week – if you’re lucky) in a room for maybe six hours with a crowd of others locked up trying to do the same with their loved ones – if you’re lucky.
As a prisoner, you hear the news of those you’ve known as they pass away, and experience the feelings of loss from your cell, alone in your grief. You watch your kids, your nieces and nephews, your cousins’ kids grow up through letters, pictures they send, and from what you hear on visits. And when all of your peers on the outside are dead and gone, you get to finish out your life alone, in a cell, with your memories.
It didn’t have to be. That’s what happened to me emotionally yesterday after I left the visit, seeing my young, strong, beautiful son. It’s called grief.
Had I known a long time ago what I know now, I may have altered the course of my sons’ life. It may have saved him, along with many other people, a lot of pain and regret.
If you're interested in learning more, read The Inner Journey Home: Letters to My Son
http://theinnerjourneyhome.com/author.php
