Please Visit :
Voices From
Victims of Grief
My story starts out when I was only three years old. My mother enrolled me in a "pre-school" for accelerated learners and that is where my life as I know it began. I met a little boy by the name of Shawn. He was different than I was but there was something about him that was very special. Even though we were of a different race, we knew that we had a special bond that would never be broken.
As a few years went by, we played together and became the best of friends until he began to have problems at home. His mother was arrested and sent to prison, He was the second oldest of 9 children and all of them were split up between foster homes in the county. This was the worst thing for him and his siblings. They had learned to grow dependant on each other for their needs and as a result of wanting to be together, many of them chose to run away. They reunited but eventually they were all caught and sent back to new homes. This went on for years, I had no idea where my best friend had gone to until many years later. I was working my way through college and became friends with a co-worker. She knew that I was alone and I explained to her that a long time ago I knew a boy that was my best friend and that we were separated by the system and before I could ever go on, I had to find him. I told her all about him, not knowing that I was sitting on the couch with his younger sister. She told me all about the years that we had been apart and informed me that he was serving 18 to life in an Ohio Prison and that he was sent there when we were only 17 years old.
I immediately wrote to him, he was the most amazing person I had ever talked to in my adult life. I never imagined that my best friend through my childhood would be in prison. To be honest, I was scared. I didn't know what to think, or what to expect of him. He was convicted of aggravated robbery and accessory to murder. But, I knew in my heart that I couldn't go on if I didn't take the time out to go and see him at least once. It was the most horrible thing I have ever had to do in my life. Seeing him, grown up but still remembering him as the little boy that I played with every day. My heart was broken. After seeing him the first time, I felt so guilty myself. I was on the "outside" living a life of new cars, a new job, and a new condo when he was living in pure hell. So, I waited for a while, hoping that the feeling of guilt would go away but it didn't. It was eating away at my soul. I had to write him just one more time to let him know how I felt. I did, I opened my heart and poured out all of the feelings that I had inside to this man who could do nothing but call me and cry when he read the letter. We started a new friendship that day when I answered the phone. I wasn't prepared for what the future had in store for us.
That first letter was written almost 2 years ago this month. Since then, our feelings have grown for each other and were married on August 21,1998.
It isn't easy. I never really knew what to expect. I really do love my husband and would do anything to have him here with me. There's no way to describe the way I feel when I walk into the visiting room and see him sitting there waiting for me to walk up to him. There's something that almost feels magical when I am sitting next to him. But, it never lasts long enough. 3 hours later, I have to leave him. I feel like I am deserting him, leaving him there to die alone and scared. I try desperately to hold in my tears until I have walked out of his sight. Sometimes it just doesn't work. I walk in and out of that prison just one day a month but yet somehow I feel as though I live in a cell of my own everyday that he is kept away from me.
