family – Frank is Emptiness

Anxiety

July 30th, 2026

It’s been at least four weeks now since my wife and I have put in applications to visit a young woman who is currently incarcerated. We also filed an application for the woman’s five-year-old son, who is in our care. The Department of Corrections (DOC) needs to do a background check on all potential visitors, apparently even kindergarten age children. The young woman has not seen her little boy since April, which makes it four months since they were together. The woman is understandably anxious about the situation. It is particularly upsetting for her since my wife, her son, and I plan on making a road trip to Texas three days from now in order to see our grandchildren down there. The young woman was really hoping to see her son before our departure. We were also hoping that would happen. The odds of us visiting her in prison before we head south are getting worse with each passing day.

Early this morning, the woman called us to tell us that the boy and I have been approved to schedule a visit. My wife has not yet been approved. After the mom called us, I immediately went to the ICSolutions website set up a meeting. We can’t schedule a visit directly with anyone at the prison. They outsourced that work to a third party, ICSolutions. It is impossible to make a visit any other way. I tried several times to schedule a visit sometime during the next couple days. I failed. My request was rejected because ICSolutions said that I was not approved. The website said that my approval from the DOC was still pending.

After that, I made several phone calls. I called the people at the prison for help. They told me to check with ICSolutions because in the DOC’s system I had been approved two days ago. I called ICSolutions twice, and they assured me that in their system I was not approved. They did say that my information would be updated tomorrow, and I should show as being approved after that. I will believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, I had four more phone calls from the incarcerated mother. In each call she became more and more agitated. Her anxiety was through the roof. During the fourth call, she tearfully exclaimed,

“I’ll never get to see him!”

I quietly told her, “You will get to see him. The people at ICSolutions said that I can go online tomorrow and I will be able to set up an appointment for a visit. If there are still open visitation slots available during the next three days, I will take one and we will come up to see you. We will drive two hours to the prison, and we can be with you for two hours.”

Now, we wait.

To be fair, the people at the prison and the folks at ICSolutions were polite and sympathetic. They really did try to help me. However, because the computers at the DOC and those at ICSolutions are not on speaking terms, they could do nothing for me. The people working within the system are all decent. The bureaucracy is nothing short of demonic.

Tomorrow morning, I will login to my account at ICSolutions and maybe, just maybe, I will be able to set up a visit.

I am not confident about that.

July 31st, 2026

Update: I finally got an appointment to visit the young woman. It is at 9:30 AM on August 2nd. She will get to see her little boy, at last.

Don Timmerman

July 26th, 2026

Don Timmerman died of cancer on July 19th. He spent almost all of his adult life advocating for peace and justice. I am tempted to say that he was “fighting” for those causes, but I’m not sure if that word is appropriate to describe a man who was an absolute pacifist. Based on his understanding of the Gospels, especially the Beatitudes, Don rejected all wars, and by extension all aspects of the military. He was an elder and leader at the Casa Maria Catholic Worker House in Milwaukee, WI. He posted a monthly newsletter, Casa Cry, in which he consistently railed against the U.S. military/industrial complex and the violence and suffering it produces. He used his jeremiads to stir the consciences of those people who bothered to peruse his essays, and he encouraged them to protest against the evils of war. Unfortunately, I suspect that most if not all his readers already agreed with most of his views. He was preaching to the choir.

I did not know Don well. I can’t remember how I met him. Nor can I remember the last time I spoke to him. Up until the time that my wife and I became guardians and fulltime caregivers for our little grandson, Asher, I was often involved in protests of one sort or another. I would see him at these demonstrations. It was his calling to bear witness. In that sense, Don was a prophet, like those in the Hebrew scriptures. If he saw injustice, he had to say something, or at least silently show his opposition to it. He had to be there.

It seems odd that I ever met him at all. Our paths in life were radically different. Don trained to be missionary priest in Tanzania. He was at one time a translator for Mother Teresa. He became deeply involved with the Catholic Worker movement. He repeatedly participated in antiwar protests and was often arrested for civil disobedience. He was passionate about living as a disciple of Christ.

I, on the other hand, graduated from West Point and I spent six years as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. I served in a helicopter unit in West Germany during the early 1980’s. My oldest son, Hans, enlisted in the Army in 2009. He went to war in Iraq. He came back damaged.

Don frequently demonstrated against ROTC at Marquette University in Milwaukee. I went there with him once. It was a lonely vigil. I think he was often all alone when he protested, but he felt that it was duty to be there. Don believed that it was wrong for a Catholic school to support ROTC. The administration at Marquette disagreed with him. I stood with him holding a sign to protest the training of military officers at Marquette. At one point, a young, fresh-faced ROTC cadet walked past us nervously. He glanced at me and hurried away. When I looked at the cadet, I saw me, an earlier version of myself. That shook me. I understood why this young man was wearing a uniform and doing what he was doing. I firmly believe that Don did not understand. He saw it all in terms of right and wrong, black and white. ROTC was wrong. Period.

The times when I was demonstrating with Don were educational for me. They also made me feel uneasy. It should be noted that my wife and I did absolutely everything we could to keep Hans out the wars. We used advice from the Quakers to show him as a conscientious objector in the system when he had to sign up for the Selective Service. The irony was that Hans enlisted anyway, and for all the same reasons that I had when I joined up fifty years ago. Hans and I were, and in a way still are, part of the system that Don so intensely opposed. We’re vets and he never was.

Back on May 1st of this year, I posted an essay on my blog, “It’s Still about Iran”. Read it if you want. Don did, and he sent a remarkably long response to what I wrote. I attempted in my article to describe what a disaster the current war against Iran is. I did not write the essay solely for pacifist readers. Actually, this article was also posted on a veteran’s website, The Havok Journal. I did not use moral arguments against the war. Don had always used moral persuasion, with limited success. I tried mostly to explain why the war was so stupid. Thomas Merton once said that a man would rather be considered clever than good. I tried to appeal to a person’s intellect more than to their conscience.

Don sent me a variation of his usual diatribe against war. He apparently assumed that I support war in general, and that I only opposed to this current fiasco. In his response, his last words to me were:

“You have chosen the state over Christ.”—Don Timmerman and Casa Maria C.W. community

That stung.

The fact that is that I agree with almost all that he said. One thing I learned from my time with Don was that people seldom listen to moral exhortations. Prophets are usually ignored, or worse. Maybe I have chosen the State over Christ. Or maybe I see more nuances than Don did. I don’t know about that. All I know is that my son and I have suffered from the effects of war. I think I hate war as much as Don did, and I may have more reason to do so.

I wrote back to Don, and I asked him not to judge me.

He replied, “Of course.”

Don was a good man. I admire his courage and his dedication. He lived his faith.

I just wish we had known each other better. I wish we had understood each other better.

Haze

July 16th, 2026

The smoke from the Canadian wildfires arrived yesterday. I went outside early in the morning to put some letters in the mailbox. Everything smelled like a campfire. The trees down the street from our house looked hazy and indistinct. I figure the visibility was at best half a mile. Usually, at that time of the day, there are some people walking their dogs or just taking a stroll. There weren’t any yesterday, and there probably won’t be any today.

It’s the same deal this morning. The sky is a dull metallic grey. The sun is rising. It’s like an angry, bloodshot eye peeking through the smoke. The ground is hard and dry. All the lawns are turning from green to brown. It’s been hot and dry for a while. A good rain would probably wash the smoke particles out of the air and help the grass, but rain is not in the forecast.

Our grandson Asher has not been to playground for days. Recently, it’s been too hot for us to go to the playground at the park. If I could get him up and dressed around sunrise, we could manage it, but that hasn’t happened. It takes Asher some time to start his day. Now, with the smoke, my wife and I don’t want him running around and exerting himself outside. He can play in our yard for a while, but he shouldn’t breathe in this crap more than necessary. He’s plays most of the day in the house. He gets bored and asks us to tell him endless stories about his stuffed animals. That wears me out. I wish we could get him outside and moving.

The haze and the heat bother me. It’s more of a psychological stress than a physical discomfort. It just feels wrong. The weather is eerie and unnatural, but I’m afraid it is part of the new normal for Wisconsin. Our son in Texas has been telling us about the nearly constant rain they are having down there. That’s weird too. In all the years he has lived in Texas, there has never been so much rain in the summer, except when hurricanes have blown through the state. He and his family are experiencing a new normal there too.

And we keep burning fossil fuels, even though we know that is the primary cause of the new normal.

A Phone Call from the Dark Side of the Moon

July 11th, 2026

She called us this morning. I answered the phone and got the usual recorded spiel from the monopoly that provides telephone service to inmates at the prison. The young woman who called can usually talk with us once day for ten minutes. Before she was connected to us, a female voice explained that “this call will be monitored and may be recorded”. Then the person in the recording said cheerfully, “Thank you for using ICSolutions.” It should be noted that every phone call she makes costs money and that money comes from a source outside of the prison, that source being me. It should also be noted that I cannot call the young woman. I don’t think anyone on the outside can. She has to initiate all communication.

The first thing she did after saying “Hello” was to ask if her five-year-old son was in the room. He was. She asked him how he was. He told her that he was okay. The boy was in good spirits this morning and he was happy to converse with his mama. Sometimes when she calls, he is in a foul mood, and flat out refuses to talk with her. On those occasions, I urge him to say something, anything, to his mother. She needs to hear his voice. These brief calls are a lifeline for her, and I am not sure that her son understands that.

She also wanted to talk with me. She only does that when there are serious issues to discuss. It’s a little like in The Godfather when Michael Corleone tells his brother, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” In any case, she wanted to explain to me that it might take a while before we can visit her at the prison. We had to fill out forms in order to see her. I had to even fill out an application for her little boy. The young woman wanted me to know that it can take up to three weeks for these requests to be approved, because the DOC only has one person working parttime to process them. That did not surprise me at all. The Department of Corrections does things in its own way on its own schedule. The young woman wanted to be certain that we had filled out every space and checked every box on the forms. I told her that we had. She was very anxious and she kept asking if I was sure. It almost got to the point where I wasn’t sure, but I told her the paperwork was done right.

The young woman badly wants to see her little boy. She told him on the phone that she hadn’t seen him in four months. I was momentarily shocked that it has been so long, but she’s right. For her, four months is an eternity. She asked the boy if he wanted to see her. He gave her an enthusiastic “Yes”. Thank God for that. Once we get permission to visit her, whenever that happens, we will make an appointment to see her. The prison is a two-hour drive from our house. My wife and I visited that place when the woman was incarcerated there back in 2019. It will be different now with her son coming along us. We have no idea how he will react to that environment. He might freak out. We won’t know until we get there.

Ten minutes is not a long time for a phone call. The young woman asked her son, “Do you love me?”, more than once. He told her that he did. She told him repeatedly how much she loved him, how he was the best thing that ever happened in her life. He kind of laughed about that. I guess he didn’t realize that she meant it. The boy really is the best thing that has ever happened to her. He is the best thing that has happened for any of us.

As time ran out, she told him one last time, “I love you.” Then the phone went dead and the call was over. She isn’t that far away, but she can’t be with him, and he can’t be with her. She might as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Never Seem to Find the Time

June 13th, 2026

“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter, and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”

From the song, Time, by Pink Floyd

I first listened to the song from Pink Floyd when I was twenty-three years old, and I was a student in the U.S. Army flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama. I was busy learning how to fly Hueys, and for me the training was often stressful. Yet, there was also a lot of dead time. Southeastern Alabama did not have a lot going for it at the time. Unless I chose to drive a couple hours to a beach on the Florida’s gulf coast, I was stuck in the local area watching the kudzu grow.

So, the first two verses of the song rang true. It often happened that I concluded “there is time to kill today” and yes, I did “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”. I did that sort of thing a lot while I was in the Army. Being a soldier meant have long stretches of tedium interrupted by short bursts of intense activity. I was told once that a day wasted is not necessarily a wasted day. I probably goofed off more than I should have. On the other hand, if I had stayed busy all the time, I probably would never have met my wife, Karin, when I was stationed in Germany. The really crucial events in life sometimes occur in the gaps between the activities that the world tells you are important.

“And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say”

Now, these two verses resonate with me.

I have a friend who is in his nineties. He’s alert and in generally good health. He still has ambitions to do things, but he mourns the fact that he no longer has the time or energy to accomplish his objectives. His goals are simple. He just wants to work in his garden. He might like to go to the synagogue again. He wants to bake cookies. These are all ordinary tasks that now seem out of reach.

I am younger than my friend, yet sometimes I feel the same way. I feel tired quite often. I leave many things undone, or half-done. I used to do volunteer work with vets and with migrants. Now I don’t. I start a project only to drop my tools (physical or mental) to deal with an unexpected problem. It is depressing at times.

I am reading a semi-autobiographical novel by Michael Chabon. It’s called Moonglow. It is about a young man listening to the stories of his dying grandfather. In one section of the book, the elderly man laments,

“I’m disappointed in myself. In my life. All my life, everything I tried. I only got halfway there. You try to take advantage of the time you have. That’s what they tell you to do. But when you’re old, you look back and see all that you did, with all that time, is waste it. All you have is a story of things you never started or couldn’t finish. Things you fought with all your heart to build that didn’t last or fought with all your heart to get rid of and they’re all still around. I’m ashamed of myself.”

I can completely understand the old man’s regrets. Sometimes, late at night, when only I am awake, I have the same dark feelings. But the grandfather’s words in the novel are only partially true. I have failed in many respects, but success is not necessarily the meaning of life. As a Tibetan Buddhist, Chogyam Trungpa once said, “The path is to goal”. A person has to take risks and play the fool sometimes in order to truly live. A person has to give a damn about others. That’s what matters.

I cannot indulge in mourning the past. I don’t have time for that. I still have work to do. I have Asher, my five-year-old grandson, to raise. I have a wife who needs me. I have other people who depend on me to some extent.

Hang on a minute. I hear Asher calling me.

“Grandpa! Come here!”

“What do you need?”

“Grandpa, come read to me.”

I will end here. I have important things to do.

Merry Month of May

May 31st, 2026

Friday was the May festival at Tamarack Waldorf School. It was a good day for it, sunny and warm. In the past, seeing as we live in Wisconsin, there have been May celebrations at the school when the weather has been rainy, windy, and cold. That sort of thing makes the gatherings less than festive. However, Friday was perfect for getting the kids outside. We all met at Pulaski Park, which is a tiny green space next to Wolski’s Tavern. In Milwaukee, it seems like nearly everything is close to a tavern. It’s a cultural thing, neither good nor bad. It just is.

The Waldorf school makes great efforts to connect class activities with the natural cycle of the seasons. The May festival is the annual observance of spring. The kindergarten students had their assembly in the morning, so that was when Asher was there with his classmates. At the beginning of the festival, everybody, including children, parents, and faculty, gathered in a large circle around a low hill in the park. The children and some of the adults wore colorful headbands, many with flowers. A small maypole stood at the apex of the knoll. One of the kindergarten teachers led everyone in reciting a long verse in praise of spring. The spoken portion of the verse was accompanied by movements to encourage all participants to get their whole bodies involved. The teacher talked about the warmth of the sun, the gentleness of the rain, the beauty of the flowers, and the new life exploding all around us. It was a moving ritual, and it harks back to times when humans were much closer to the earth and its rhythms. There was a vaguely pagan feel to it, but that’s okay. We have forgotten much of what our ancestors knew intuitively, and we have to relearn these things.

After the verse, the kids ran wild. Some went to the playground. Some threw rings around the top of the maypole. Some drew on the ground with chalk. Some blew bubbles. Some ate popcorn. Asher found a jump rope, and for the first time ever, he actually jumped over the rope successfully.

My wife and I mingled with the other caregivers. I have been trying to network with parents from Asher’s class. We want to organize play dates so that Asher and his classmates can keep in contact during the summer break. That is important for Asher, and it also good for us as Asher’s legal guardians and de facto parents. We need a sense of community. The other caregivers are from a generation that is much younger than my wife and me, but we all have the same mission. We are all trying to raise the next cycle of children in a world that is not often friendly or forgiving.

I talked with a father about the future of the little ones in our midst. I told him what I hoped for Asher.

“Asher has a gentle soul. I want him to keep it.”

Just that achieving that much is huge challenge.

My wife and I talked briefly with a young mother. She has three kids in the school. We explained to the woman about Asher and our struggles to care for the boy. Raising Asher is an all-consuming task for us. She listened to us patiently. Then she said,

“He will grow up to be a good human being.”

Asher is only one child in a world with billions of them. There are so many kids on this earth who are suffering. Karin and I can’t save them all. It is all we can do to care of just one of them.

Asher is in the springtime of his life. Now is the time for him to grow and flourish. This is the time for him to become who he is destined to be. If Asher grows up a be a good man in a broken world, that will be enough. Maybe more than enough.

Absence

April 26th, 2026

A young man, who is a close relative, cut off all contact with me about ten months ago. I haven’t I heard anything at all from him since he broke the connection with me. I don’t expect to hear from him anytime soon, and maybe that is for the best. As I think back on our last conversation, this separation was probably necessary and inevitable.

I spoke to a neighbor about this young man, and he told me about his son, who had left without a word one day and never communicated with his parents for ten years. It was not clear to me from what my neighbor said if he and his son ever reconciled. He did tell me that his son died.

The discussion with my neighbor made me think about the long estrangement I had with my own family. I left home at the age of eighteen to go to school at West Point and pursue a career in the U.S. Army. I was gone for twelve years. I visited my family when I could, but that was at most maybe twice a year. When I was stationed in West Germany, I think I went a couple years without seeing them at all. We stayed in contact, although at that time it was mostly through snail mail. I believe I was on good terms with my family, but we were far apart and our lives were on very different trajectories. We missed big chunks of each other’s lives. I wasn’t there for my dad’s first heart attack. He wasn’t in Germany for my wedding. During those years, I became an Army officer and a helicopter pilot. I lived all over the United States and spent three years in Europe. I married a German woman and eventually left the military to work in the trucking industry. When I finally returned to my hometown, I was thirty years old with a wife and a baby boy. I also arrived with some trauma and a drinking problem. I was not my parents’ little boy anymore.

Reestablishing family relationships proved to be difficult. I wasn’t ready for all the changes in my family of origin. They definitely weren’t ready for me. At the risk of stating the obvious, things were not the same as before I left. I was a different man, and they were also different from what I remembered. My father and I had a number of bitter arguments, and I am convinced that some of the strife was due to the fact that we were fighting with someone who no longer existed. I couldn’t recognize that the person yelling at me was a stranger to me, and that person couldn’t understand it either.

In Buddhism there is the idea that all aspects of who we are as individuals are transitory. The physical changes in our bodies as time passes are obvious, but people change internally too. We evolve emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Fifty years ago, I went to West Point, and I am not much like that scared and idealistic young man anymore. The Buddhists talk about the Five Skandhas, the shifting sands of our being. They are defined as follows:

“The five skandhas are essentially a method for understanding that every aspect of our lives is a collection of constantly changing experiences. There is no one aspect that is truly solid, permanent or unique. Everything is in flux. Everything is dependent upon multiple causes and conditions.” from the Encyclopedia of Buddhism.

Even when living with somebody every day, there are those changes. Sometimes, they sneak up on a person. Our grandson, Asher, is five years old, and he seems to be with me almost constantly. Even so, some mornings I wake and look at him and wonder who this little man is. He literally grows up overnight. He changes as I gaze at him sleeping in bed. His skandhas are very active.

I may meet my young man again, or maybe I might not. If I do see him again, I will be meeting him again for the very first time, because he will be a different person, and so will I.

The Looking Glass House

April 11th, 2026

“Oh, Kitty, how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there is a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend that the glass has got all soft like gauze so that we can get through. Why it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It will be easy enough to get through—-“

The quotation above is an excerpt of Alice speaking to her cat in the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

I sat in the Nikiya Harris-Dodd Visitation Center, which is part of the Community Reintegration Center (CRC) in Franklin, Wisconsin. The CRC is a jail, and all jails have the same depressing vibe. It’s part of their essence. As far as jails go, the CRC is not that bad, but it is still intimidating. The visitation center is clean and neat and utterly uninviting. When I checked in at the counter for my scheduled visit, I had to show the guard my photo ID, which she kept and explained that I would get it back upon my departure from the facility. I was there early because I didn’t know how busy the place would be, seeing as visits to the “residents” can only happen on the weekend. I had an appointment to see the young woman at 9:15 AM. The waiting area was almost empty, which was a good thing since there are only six chairs available. The walls are painted a dull bureaucratic grey color. There are two vending machines containing overpriced snacks and beverages. There is also one vending machine tucked in the corner of the hall that dispenses Narcan for opioid overdoses, Deterra bags for safe deactivation and disposal of drugs, and fentanyl detection strips. Everything in that machine is free of charge.

The little boy sat near me in a chair with his legs folded underneath him. The young man had never been in a jail before. It was his first time visiting his mama while she was locked up. He was excited about seeing his mama, but he really didn’t like his environment. He and I waited for the guard to call us through the security check.

A Black family walked into the lobby. There was a very elderly woman, a middle-aged lady, and a small child. They checked in with the guard and handed over their IDs. The middle-aged woman asked about getting a locker. This confused the guard. The woman explained that they had to put all their belongings into a locker at a different facility when they visited their incarcerated family member. The guard said they didn’t need one at his jail. They could take their purses and keys with them. I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t know the rules for visitations at the CRC. Every jail and prison is its own little kingdom, and each one has slightly different regulations. A visitor really can’t know what the rules are until they actually get there.

I talked with the family after they sat down near the boy and me. Their little guy was two years old. I told the great grandma that my boy was five. Their two-year-old was there to visit his mama, just like my boy was. The two women were raising that toddler just like my wife and I are raising our boy. Our families are in very similar situations. We are all just doing what has to be done to care for the children.

My little guy and I finally went through security and entered a big room with several long, narrow hallways, each of which had many windows. None of the windows looked outside the building. They all looked into another hallway where the inmates were. The boy and I were assigned to window 51. We sat on a stool apparently molded from concrete. There was an old school telephone receiver attached to a cable. The receiver was made of some kind of dense plastic and heavy enough to be used as a bludgeon. My boy did not want to hold the phone, so I held it for him.

His mama was extremely excited to see her son. She wanted to know everything he had been doing. The boy was reluctant to speak with her. He sat on my lap so that he could see her better through the window. His mama kept joking with him. She kept saying how much she loved him. The boy did not like talking on the phone and he did not like the glass that separated him from his mama.

At one point, he reached out and touched the window with his index finger. His mama did the same, and their fingers almost met. Almost. Almost wasn’t quite good enough. It never is.

“Let’s pretend that the glass has got all soft like gauze so that we can get through.” Alice said that. It worked for Alice, but this boy couldn’t get through the glass into this particular Looking Glass House. And his mama couldn’t get out. It’s probably better that he didn’t go inside.

We left after twenty minutes. The boy doesn’t want to go back. I don’t blame him. Maybe he will change his mind. I hope so for his mother’s sake.

Community Reintegration Center

April 4th, 2026

I pulled into the parking lot of the Community Reintegration Center. The center is a rather ugly brick structure. Its primary purpose is to keep some people inside and other people out. The housing area has translucent windows that allow light inside, but do not allow the occupants to look out. The building is surrounded by high fences with razor wire on the top. The place is no way welcoming, not on the outside and definitely not on the inside.

The Community Reintegration Center (CRC) is a jail. Period. I saw no evidence of anybody being reintegrated into the local community. The whole point of the facility is to keep the folks inside separated from the community. Those who are incarcerated within its walls are referred to as “residents” on the CRC website. Residents? Really? I guess in a strange way they chose to reside there, but they are prisoners, plain and simple. Why not just call them that?

I went to the CRC to pick up a young woman’s personal property. It’s not a major issue to pick up her stuff, but I don’t like doing it. This is not the first time that I have had to recovering her belongings, and it’s always a cause for anxiety and melancholy. The CRC has a visitor center, which is the first stop for anybody entering the building. At least they don’t call it a “welcome center”, because it’s not. The people working there are polite and professional, but the hall is a bit like an ER: nobody wants to be there. Nobody.

Since I was not there to actually visit the woman, I did not need to go through a security check. I did have to show my ID, twice, while I was there. After I told the guard who I was and why I was there, she called the lady in the property department to come on down, and then she told me to sit and wait.

The waiting area was strange. There was a total of six chairs arranged in a rectangular formation, two rows of three. The chairs were spaced well apart. The area seemed to be designed to isolate the visitors from each other. One guy who came into the center initially thought to sit in the row of seats that were closer to the entrance for the security check section. He decided to move back to where I was sitting when he realized that those seats upfront all had handcuffs dangling from them.

I sat and waited. It was kind of like going to the DMV, except more intimidating. Nobody is in a rush and there is no place else to go. I had time, so I gazed at the official bulletins posted all over the walls. Other people came inside. Two of them were obviously lawyers. The man and the woman might as well have worn uniforms. They both had that professional legal appearance: they wore suits and carried serious business paperwork in their hands. They had that look on their faces that said, “Let’s get this shit done and get out of here.” Actually, everyone had that look on their face, including me.

At last, the lady from property showed up. She was a tiny, older Black woman wearing a black surgical mask on her face. She carried a large plastic bag in one hand and some papers in the other.

She asked me for my ID. I fumbled for it. She told me to take my time. She asked me how I was. I told her that I had done this sort of thing before. She gave me a questioning look. I tried to clarify what I meant by saying,

“Not here, but for the same person.”

She nodded. Then she told me,

“When I was young, I made some bad decisions. Then I had time to think about what I had done, and I considered my options. Don’t give up on her.”

I replied, “I don’t. I can’t. My wife and I care for our grandson fulltime.”

Then lady asked me, “How old is he?”

“Five.”

She sighed and said, “Well, maybe he won’t remember any of this.”

I considered that. Maybe she is right. But this stint in jail isn’t the whole story. This is just the start of a long absence. The boy will remember something, even if it’s only a feeling of abandonment. He won’t forget, not entirely.

She had me sign the paperwork. I grabbed the bag. As I walked away, the woman called after me, “Don’t give up on her!”

As I tried to open the exit door, I called back to her,

“I won’t!”

Going Downhill

April 2nd, 2026

I’m old enough to have had friends and family members die from chronic debilitating diseases. A sudden death is traumatic. I know this because one of my younger brothers died in a car wreck at the age of twenty-eight. But a slow death, one in which there is a gradual disintegration of mind or body, is agonizing. It’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck. The progress of the disease seems to be inexorable, and human efforts to stop or even to slow it down are often futile.

My mom died from Alzheimer’s disease. I have close friend whose father is suffering from the same tragic ailment. My friend’s father used to be a brilliant mathematician. Now he’s not. Now the man has great difficulty with walking up stairs and performing a number of other everyday tasks. The father, oddly enough, can still improvise music on the piano, but his other mental faculties are slipping away. My friend tells me that sometimes his dad is okay, meaning that his father hasn’t gotten any worse. The disease plateaus for a while and then continues on its negative path. There is not a smooth downward trajectory. The disease attacks the brain in fits and starts, but the overall direction is always clear.

I had two friends from work, both of whom died from cancer. One of them suffered from a type of blood cancer. The other had a brain tumor. Both of them received treatments, chemical and/or radiological. Each of them rallied for a while. I remember in visits with each of the two men how their wives would light up at any good news. The wives encouraged their partners and told them that they were getting better and it would be okay. My two friends did get better, but that was only a brief interlude, and eventually they both succumbed.

I had another brother who died from complications of alcoholism. Officially, he died of a heart attack, but it was more than that. He didn’t take care of himself, and I don’t think he wanted to live. His mental and physical decline were in many ways similar to that of somebody with Alzheimer’s. My brother would have a severe medical crisis, then he would recover, but he never quite recovered to the previous level of health. He always dropped down a step. I, along with many other people, hoped that he would turn things around one day. Other folks with addictions have been able to do that. My brother didn’t.

I sometimes speak of watching somebody else slowly die. I don’t think anybody actually just “watches” somebody whom they love die. To me, it is impossible to simply observe the destruction of someone else in a disinterested way. It’s not like going to see a Greek tragedy in a theater or binge watching a slasher movie on Netflix. The person who cares about the individual who is desperately ill is not just a spectator. That person is also a participant in the drama.

I am currently a participant in the struggle of a young person who seems to have the same disease as my brother. I love the person and I cannot separate myself from their suffering. I hope for their recovery, but I often feel completely helpless. I know I cannot save the individual.

So, what is left? There is hope. It is perhaps a forlorn and irrational hope, but it’s all I have. I cling to that hope despite all evidence that it is pointless.

That’s what I do.