It’s just a birthday and not much more. Today I became 49 years old and that marks about the 28th birthday that I’ve spent locked up. Merle Haggard once sang a beautiful song about turning 21 in prison, doing life without parole, and when I hear it, I smile. My 21st birthday was the first birthday I spent locked up and I’ve spent every birthday since locked up. The past 26 birthdays I’ve spent in solitary confinement here on Florida’s death row.
After all these years you’d think that birthdays don’t mean much anymore. It’s just another mark in my calendar, another day lost forever. But in truth this birthday is different. In all the years that I’ve been locked up, I’ve never had a visit on my birthday (actually I did have a legal visit on a birthday once – the lawyer came to tell me she was leaving and dropping my case. I never saw her again) But for most of the years I’ve been locked up I didn’t get that many visits anyway, so I had no real expectations of getting a birthday visit.
That changed about 10 years ago when my mom and stepfather retired and moved from California to Florida. Before that, because of the distance, they never could visit. But in 1998 they moved to a town about an hour away and suddenly for the first time ever I had regular visits.
At first they were here, rain or shine, like clockwork every other Sunday. A few times my sisters would come up with them and even bring my niece and nephews. Those visits meant a lot as it made me feel like “family”. I enjoyed the few hours spent just talking about what’s going on in their lives and feeling, at least for that moment, that I was part of their lives – and that I still mattered.
But it is only too common, as the years passed the visits became fewer and fewer. Other things would come up and they couldn’t make it. The visits every other Sunday became once a month, and then became even more unpredictable as the month would pass with no visit and now I no longer even know when to expect a visit – they just come whenever they can.
In all fairness, I really don’t blame my mom and John (my stepfather of 40 years) as they are now getting old and they both have serious health problems. For many years now my stepfather has been confined to a wheelchair and it was hard for me to watch out the visiting area windows as my mom slowly pushed him the long distance from the front gate to the death row unit.
I really do understand why their visits have become fewer and fewer, and I’m grateful for even being able to still see them at all. But it still hurts that I don’t see them that much anymore. As for other family, they almost don’t come at all anymore. My oldest sister might come up with mom once or twice a year, but no other family members have visited in years. Most of my 9 brothers and sisters have actually never visited at all, not even once in 26 years.
Like so many others in prison – maybe each in their own way, all prisoners - holidays and birthdays take on a different meaning as its not so much a celebration but its how we gauge our ever fading contact with the real world outside. The reality of it is that family and friends do inevitably drift away, it is a slow but certain erosion and one day you wake up realizing that you’re no longer a part of their lives and the reality of that loss does brings you down.
Of all the men I’ve known here, there were very few (not more than 10) who have been here more than 5 years and still get regular visits from family. That’s all part of being condemned to death - we are condemned to slowly die one day at the time for years, even decades at a time, and all that we know and love in that world out there just slowly fades away from our lives until all that we know and love is gone and lost forever. Both family and even the closest of friends become only a faded memory, but try as we might they are never forgotten as those memories are all that we have to hold on to.
My fate is not my own, but a fate only too common among the condemned. Even if not at first, in time as the years slowly pass, we each become a forgotten soul. As the family and friends we once knew drift away we desperately try to form new friendships and even more serious relationships with new people who come into our lives. But it is the State’s cruel intent that we shall be isolated and forgotten. They know that family and friends do inevitably drift away and our only hope to stay in touch with that outside world is to form new friends, who might become our new family. A few years ago the prison system here in Florida insidiously created a new rule – the only one like it in the country –that prohibits Florida’s death row prisoners from “soliciting pen pals” or new friends.
For as long as I can remember prisoners would always place “personal ads” in publications asking people to write them a letter. But now its no longer allowed. After this hate-induced draconian rule was passed the prison system began targeting any death row prisoner who dared to violate this rule. Prison employees would actually scan the internet and newspapers to search for prisoner personal ads, then subject them to severe disciplinary sanctions – at least a month in punitive lock-up and loss of all privileges, and up to 6 months of “no mail” restriction.
I have no doubt that the purpose and intent if this insidious rule was to deliberately isolate death row prisoners from the outside world. Family and friends kept the condemned prisoner’s hope alive and with hope we find the strength to survive. They want to kill us and by taking away that source of hope they know our will to live will fade away just as family and friends do..
In the years since this rule prohibiting “solicitation” of new friends took effect, the intended consequences are only too clear. Most death row prisoners are now far more isolated and alone, a great number never getting any mail at all. They are forgotten and their hope and their will to live fades away ever so slowly like the dying flame of a burnt out candle. Then one day they wake up to the reality that the light is gone completely. Although physically still alive, inside they have already died.
The truth is that I’m one of the lucky ones as I still have a small network of friends who diligently work to keep my hope alive. Most are overseas so they cannot visit often even though I have no doubt they would come more often if only they could.
Still today I spent my birthday in my cage, alone. As coincidence would have it, my birthday only falls on Sunday (my designated visiting day) about once every 10 years. And today was the day it fell on a Sunday. Although I know only too well not to get my expectations up, today I did hope for a visit, and it does weighs heavily upon me that no one came to visit and no one of my family even sent a card.
Still I have to wonder how other lost souls around me must feel when their birthday comes around, as they know they have long been forgotten by both family and friends. Is it any easier for those among the ranks of the condemned when they don’t have any expectations? Perhaps by accepting that nobody cares you are not so disappointed when holidays and birthdays pass without even a card. I don’t know. But I know how I feel today – alone and abandoned. And I hope that by sharing this with those that that might read this perhaps those that have a friend on death row will reflect upon how much it pains each of us when we don’t even get a simple card that reminds us that we are not forgotten – that even in a world seemingly intent to kill us, someone still has the compassion to care.
Today I wish myself a Happy Birthday. And hope that, one way or another, this is my last birthday in this man-made hell as on days like this I truly do wonder if perhaps living is itself a fate worse than death.
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