Wow. The last 9 days have been a crazy, exciting, sleep-deprived whirlwind and I apologize for not posting sooner, but just let me say again…wow!
Chris is out. He’s a free man for the first time in more than three years. When he pulled up in my driveway last Friday he looked pale, tired, and just plain worn out, but happy, happy, happy! He was a bundle of nerves from head to toe, which oddly enough, I did not expect. Can you imagine having most of your life controlled for three years and then all of a sudden being turned loose right out into the street. Luckily he had a special person waiting there in the parking lot and from the way he tells the story he threw his arms in the air as if he’d just scored a winning goal. He did abstain from kissing the ground though! He was so nervy that he hadn’t even eaten since the day before, nor slept a wink at all. They kept him in a holding cell the day prior to his release and he’d simply paced the floors for hours just waiting to be free. He was strikingly thin and we wanted to take him for a nice big steak, but when we asked him where he wanted to eat his only request was IHOP. He hadn’t had bacon or sausage in three years and he wanted blueberry pancakes too! It was so nice just watching him eat.
Jennifer and I have learned a lot about the ins and outs of what someone needs upon getting out of prison, especially if there’s no family ready and willing to take the recently released prisoner in. They are released with a debit card that has nearly $40 on it and nothing more. Chris needed everything that we take for granted each and every day. He needed everything from a bar of soap to razors to a decent pair of shoes that fit his feet properly. We took him shopping at Target that night and bought him some clothes, and we gave him the $150 we’d collected in the weeks before through our bake sales, as well as the donated iPhone 3GS that I’d had turned on for him the day before his release. To say he was grateful would be an understatement. In addition to his shopping trip, we gave him all the other things that had been donated to our cause. He was completely overwhelmed at the kindness that had been shown him from total strangers. This is the night that the word “family” began to take on a different meaning for Chris.
With each day that has followed the first, Chris has gotten slightly more settled in to his freedom, and antsy pacing has morphed into rearranging, cleaning, planning, and job searching. We met with his parole officer, we went to the DMV, and we visited his small son. He had a string of perfectly hot showers that he was able to take all by himself. He joked, “I dropped the soap three times just because I could!” Step by step we are trying to rebuild his life from almost scratch, and little by little the details of his life in prison are being shared in bits and pieces when he’s comfortable. Each day he tackles something new, whether it’s contacting a relative he misses, or digging out his old moldy clothes from the last residence he had before being locked up. In the midst of everything he’s trying to do to get acclimated to his new life on the outside, he still keeps in touch with the few friends he had on the inside. One day he and Jennifer made a special trip to give $5 to the wife of one of those friends who was simply trying to gather enough money to buy a $15 phone card for him to be able to call home. Every single thing we take for granted here in the comfort of the free world comes at a high price on the inside, if it’s not impossible to get at all.
In a few hours, Chris will get up and go to work for a day. It’s not much, but it will be the first money he’s earned in a long time, and earning money goes very far when one needs to just feel like a man again. We are happy for him, and thrilled to have been part of this time in his life. The further we get in his particular journey, the more we know we’re doing the right thing in starting this non-profit organization. We’ll be getting back to fundraising pretty soon. If you have ideas, please share them! Pictures coming soon!
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