November 29th, 2023
Incarceration is like a small death. That may sound like an exaggeration, and maybe it is. However, when a person goes to prison for long period of time, it really feels like they have died. They are cut off from everybody and everything they love, and likewise the people that care about the prisoner are physically separated from that individual. The separation is not usually total and final, like with a biological death, but it is still harsh and very real.
Incarceration closely resembles a sudden death. The arrest and subsequent imprisonment are often unexpected occurrences. In retrospect a person may be able to look at the prior chain of events and recognize that there were warning signs before the police to control of the situation, but at the moment of arrest, it all seems shocking, just like when a person gets run over by a bus. What happened? How could this happen? It feels unreal, just like death would feel.
Incarceration also resembles a sudden death in that there are people left behind who need to pick up the pieces of the prisoner’s life. The person who goes to prison often leaves a mess for somebody else to clean up. In a person’s day to day life, there is always unfinished business: bills to pay, appointments to keep, relationships to maintain. When a person gets busted and winds up in jail, everything in their life stops. It is worthwhile to understand that an incarcerated person is stripped of all the trappings of their normal life. The person has no access to money, or the Internet, or a phone, or even paper, envelopes, and stamps to write an old school snail mail letter. The incarcerated person is helpless, and that is by design. The individual is completely dependent on people on the outside to get anything done. Friends and family have to take over everything, just as if the person in prison or jail had just died. Woe to the person who has nobody on the outside. They are truly lost.
I know a person who has been recently arrested and will likely go to prison for years. I have been trying to sort out their affairs, and I have run into road blocks every step of the way. I don’t have a power of attorney, so I do not have the authority to, for instance, sell their car for them. I spend an inordinate amount of time explaining the situation to folks who have never dealt with this sort of thing before. When I do explain what has happened, they often display shock and dismay, and offer their sympathy and condolences, just like I was talking about the dear departed.
An incarcerated person is missed by others, usually. The person was part of some kind of community, and perhaps members of that group depended on this individual for financial support. People who know the prisoner also feel a deep emotional loss. For instance, the imprisoned person who I am helping has a small child, a toddler. Yesterday that little boy looked up at me and confidently said,
“When Mama comes home, she’s going to give me a gummi worm.”
The boy smiled. I wept.
The boy’s mother is not coming back. For the foreseeable future, this child is an orphan.
It’s a small death, and I grieve.
Frank is Emptiness 