Aug 03
Lisafamily anger, bi-polar disorder, family, grief, grieving, mom, prison, sister
The post today is written by my sister Lisa after her recent visit to see me in prison.
Whilst in Florida setting up a permanent camper site, I took my final days to drive to the panhandle. Outside of Panama City, about 20 miles east there is a small town called Wewahitchka. Here is where the prison sits, in the middle of a swamp where my brother Clark resides.
I had picked my mother up at the new airport in Panama City so that we might visit Clark together.
Knowing that my brother suffers from bi-polar disorder, still I was ill-prepared for his state during this time. Sure, he mustered a laugh or to at some remembrance or joke. But for the most part he was angry. Plain anger oozed out of every word and tone. At one point I had to place a hand over my mother’s trembling hand to nudge her to silence. Mom’s urging for Clark to try and rekindle his faith more, journal more, read more, etc. only encouraged an elevation of anger in his voice and agitation in his manner.
Sometimes you just have to go with the moment and let it be.
What must be remembered by all who know and love Clark is that he is grieving. Grieving has five main steps and each can be gone through again and again. And steps can overlap.
1-Denial-”this can’t be happening to me”, No crying. Not accepting or even acknowledging the loss, in Clark’s case his freedom that was soon to be taken after the crime.
2-Anger-”why me?”, feelings of wanting to fight back, or get even with those whom choose to not to keep in touch seeming to care not. Or just his whole situation and the loss of freedom.
3-Bargaining-bargaining often takes place before the loss, but in Clark’s case it may simply be an attempt to make deals with God to stop or change his situation.
4-Depression-overwhelming feelings of hopelessness, frustration, bitterness, self pity, mourning loss of freedom as well as the hopes, dreams and plans for the future. Feeling lack of control, feeling numb. Perhaps feeling suicidal.
5-Acceptance-there is a difference between resignation and acceptance. You have to accept the loss, not just try to bear it quietly. Realization that it is his own doing that will keep him from living in freedom. Finding the good that can come out of the pain of loss, finding comfort and healing. Our goals turn toward personal growth. Stay with fond memories of life outside of prison.
At this visit I found Clark to be angry, at his own admission, at everything and everyone. He won’t go outside to the ‘yard’ because it angers him to not have the ability to do more or go further. It’s simply reminds him of what he no longer has. He’s angry with family that refuse to visit or write.
He has a lot of depression as of this visit with his feelings of numbness and lack of control. I don’t believe him to be suicidal, but more self-preserving. His anger and numbness at this time keep him protected.
When starting this website, Clark was elated to have an outlet. With time his manic state of writing seemed ceaseless. But then, as is normal with the disorder, he cycled down. Believing his writings useless and childlike, he stopped.
He has promised to send me the rest of his novel work to be proofed and then I will forward the first two chapters and the last at the request of a professor friend of ours in Florida.
It is my hope that he will resume writing again soon, but I do understand the need for him to cycle up once again before this is possible.
Please consider writing Clark and if you ever will be in his area ask him to send you a visitor form as it will need approved before you would be allowed to see him. And check out the prison site here to learn about visiting rules. His mailing address is on the Contact page.
Lisa Coleman Griffiths
May 24
LisaIt's My Life, Uncategorized bus, dog, family, Florida, home, horse, prison
The southern sun promised another sultry day as I sat in my seat. The stale air that permeates most buses hit hard on my senses as I gazed out the window. While waiting for the bust to start moving, I looked down at the shaded asphalt. Then up at a live oak with its parasitic Spanish moss. It was dripping dew heavily and as I looked further into the trees, I couldn’t help notice the silvery hue of the moss—a sure sign of inadequate rainfall, without which it could not show off its normal greenish brown color.
Light from the low hanging sun was diffused as it streamed through the live oak, and yet it was heating up through the pain of glass through which I stared. This was my ride home. So many times in my 50 years I had moved to a new town, new city, new state. Each time with renewed hope. This trip was different. Oh, I was to have a new home, but this time there was no hope. The bus jerked into motion. Finally, I thought to myself. Let’s get on with it.
As the bus found its way to the main drag and onto the highway, I watched from the window as users of the sidewalk went on about their morning business. My mind was in neutral as the bus came to a stoplight. I looked down at the car outside my window. A boy of about eight years old, holding his backpack in his lap, sat in the backseat. Our eyes met. As he looked at me, seemingly a little befuddled, he faintly smiled. Before I could summon a response his mother was shaking her finger, admonishing him not to look up at me. Although he did not look back, I kept watching him, remembering myself at that age and the carefree, wonderful life I had with my loving family.
As I drifted in my mind, the bus accelerated up the on-ramp onto the interstate. I mindlessly watched the tree line and noted each mile marker as it flashed by. How many times had I driven this stretch of road for pleasure and business?
After 20 minutes or so on the interstate, I spotted a stray dog mindlessly trotting down in a ravine. I know this stretch of highway and what lie beyond the easements. This dog was lost. An upwelling of sorrow came upon me, my love of dogs, and I feared for its future. It also brought back memories of Ruby, my bloodhound, which I had to give away.
Such was my condition. I had lost every material possession except what was in my paper bag. I opened my bag to assure myself, for the fifth time since getting on the bus, that what I did have left to my name was still there: six pair of socks, two t-shirts, cowboy boots—one pair, sweatshirt—one, three jockey underwear, five books (biography of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, three civil war books), and various toiletries. This was what my life had been winnowed down to. As I rolled the paper bag up, I clung to it in my lap and somehow, unconsciously, feeling that I would lose this last vestige of ownership.
I felt the bus slow and swing off the interstate. Immediately I recognized the little town. Where had my mind been? We’re here already. Time was moving up-tempo. This town remains a holdout of the early 20th century Victorian style homes. Some grand. Some not. A sleepy little place heavily treed with pin oak and live oak laced with lazily hanging Spanish moss. I had come here many times to look at antique furniture in the many shops dotted around this town without a stoplight.
We skirted around to a lesser highway and headed north again. We shortly crossed a sunken prairie that floods during the rainy months. I knew from history that it had been a part of a great waterway that bisected the state and, at one time, was a viaduct to move goods. The mile to cross this prairie shocked me into the memory of my son. He was living off this road not far from the northern edge of it.
The bus headed uphill off the prairie and I sat up preparing to catch a glimpse of my son’s home. My eyes filled as we closed in on his home. I had to look quick. Would he be home? Or at work? I thought the bus was moving too fast. I wanted to scream, “Slow down, dammit! Don’t you see? I have to see his car!” There! There it is! My son was home. Does he know I’m this close? Does he care? No, I doubt it—on both counts. We are estranged, my biggest loss of all.
As tears uncontrollably flowed, I realized the façade of strength I had so pretentiously put up most of my adult life was creaking with weariness. I quickly looked around at the other passengers, but no one noticed my moment of weakness. They too were in their own thoughts of their destination. They could care less about me as I cared little about them, at least for now. No, that’s not right. I was consumed with myself, as I had been most of my adult life.
Soon I caught glimpses of the university, Taco Bell (where I stopped from time to time when I had
been this way in the past). Not long after, the city limits were reached and farm after farm raced by. Thoughts of my horse “Bell”, a thorough-bred/draft horse, appeared. She, too, had to be given up, sold I’m sure. The hours we spent training, the understood relationship we established—how dog-like in many ways, but so very different. Bell possessed such a good mind. I loved to go to the barn, open the gate and whistle out in the dark pasture of morning. She, knowing its feeding time, came galloping as the ground groaned with her weight and speed. These were special moments and painful to remember.
Home was nearing, I knew by the surroundings it must be, and I began to count just how many homes I had actually lived in since birth. My father was a Navy man so with that in the mix, and my unstable life on my own, it was upward of 30+. Wow! Was it really that many? One thing for sure is that this would be my final home. Angst filled me rapidly. I began to shred once more. The façade was creaking once again. I leaned back as best I could, set my bag beside me and closed my eyes trying to calm my deteriorating control.
I went from home to home in my mind thinking of, and recalling, one salient good memory from each. It was not hard until I got to my 40th year of life. I had to stop there. The precipice had been reached about that time and so began the slippery slope. I kept hearing “home” in my mind, even Dorothy’s mantra to go back to Kansas came through. “There’s no place like home.” Then out loud, perhaps too loud, I said, “I have no home. I have no home.” Across the aisle, a man, maybe 30, said, “We all have no home, dude.” Sheepishly, I turned and looked out my window.
Then I heard it, “We’re home, dawgs!” I looked and there it was. Home. Sure enough, steel, concrete, barbed wire, gun towers—my last home. Oh, there would be other homes, but they would all look similar to this until my life light ceased.
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