My son has repeatedly told me that prison saved his life, but I hate it when he says that. He isn’t safe at home yet.
You might call that pessimism, but I call it being real.
He wakes up every day surrounded by predators and pressures and yes, a lot of drugs. He lives in close quarters with people who lie, steal, and kill as an established way of life— and at Level 4, he walks among those who have made a career out of any number of deadly professions. There are enmeshed religious groups and gangs and gambling traps; there is mental instability and ignorance and intolerance at every turn in there.
While he was snatched up from the ravages of the streets and from the deadly throes of his addictions, making his captors into saviors doesn’t work for me. People die unnatural, unnecessary deaths behind American prison walls every day— blunt trauma, medical neglect, overdoses, suicide. The truth is that my son can order up any substance he would like this afternoon and, on account of a bad batch be in a body bag by sundown. In prison. In the place we think is rehabilitating folks.
So, no, until I watch him walk out of those gates, he isn’t “saved.”
He is, however, very much alive, and I saw it with my own eyes this week.
After a year and a half of forced separation, his ‘Loss of Visits’ status has been rescinded, and I was allowed in. This past Monday we got to sit across from each other to catch up on life, real time— no glass, no phone, no restraints, no computer she-voice to interrupt us mid-sentence.
The brief report is that he looks good and he is doing really well. He gets two yards a day now, and his workouts have resumed. He has commissary and books (thanks to our readers) and he gets along well with his bunkie. Even his dental needs are [finally] being addressed.
BUT. After the formalities and fluff of our first hour together gave way to a more nuanced discussion, it slowly occurred to me that I do not really know him anymore. He is my son, yes, but I was also visiting a veritable stranger.