They released him from the bars that enclosed him, but they didn’t prepare him for life outside the walls that imprisoned him. I spoke with a friend of his about his life after prison expecting to hear how thankful he was to have regained his liberty—to be outside those walls. I wasn’t prepared for her response. I was instead reminded of a poignant moment from the film The Patriot.
A posted bill from General Washington announcing that all slaves in service to the war effort for one year will be granted freedom. A slave from the militia uttered a single word in response:
“Freedom.”
His comment was met with a callous retort from one of the other men:
“What the hell are you gonna do with freedom?”
What will you do with freedom? Those of us who have never experienced the bonds of prison or slavery cannot fully appreciate the shackles of freedom with which the former inmate or slave is burdened. I listened in stone cold silence to his friend as she tried to explain.
“The anxiety he experienced was so suffocating that for the first three months he seldom left the house and when his mother could coax him out, his favorite place to go was Costco. He said that the walls reminded him of the walls of the prison he hated, but somehow found comfort in.
It was as though prison had become his home and, like an abused child, he was loath to leave it no matter how much suffering he must endure, because the place is still his home. He knows nothing else.”
I was hopeful my son would take this gift—this second chance—to get on with the business of living life, but what I discovered is that such transitions are necessarily both painful and gradual. I presumed a binary circumstance; that you are either imprisoned or free and that once free you will behave as a free man, making choices for your life.
I presumed too much.
In my dealings with Tim, he hid his reality from me, and hid it well. It wasn’t until I spoke with his friend two and a half years after his accident that I learned just how difficult making simple choices was for him.
“And so he would revert to what he knew before prison.” she continued.
“Not drugs.” I replied fearfully.
“No. He was done with that. He made pancakes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He made pancakes. That’s what he did before prison. He would come out of his room and make breakfast for anyone who was in his mother’s home. He made pancakes—sometimes for just her. Then he would return to his room and log into Facebook. It was his only social outlet. He kept in touch with you, with Rachel, his friends through a computer monitor. He wasn’t capable of much else in the beginning.”
Stunned, I suddenly found myself without words.
I spoke with my son regularly by phone during those early days. I listened to his plans as he cobbled them together. He planned to attend a vocational school and learn a trade, ultimately choosing to become a welder. I encouraged him and reminded him that this was just a launch-point for his new life, assuring him that the foothold of a vocation would open other doors.
I would become lost in the experience of telling him that he would then have choices—to be a career welder if that’s what he wanted but there was so much more opportunity. That he could take the opportunity to attend college and choose a profession if that was more to his liking.
In the beginning, I spoke to him almost exclusively of the opportunities that would avail themselves if he could but make it to this one milestone, all the while completely unaware that a successful day for him meant something as simple as coming out of his bedroom.
And in these conversations we found camaraderie.
I tried with everything in me to call him out, to join me in this next chapter of his life and, as I expected, he responded. As we talked, I could sense the spark of life, so long missing in him, beginning to take hold. I could hear it in his voice and with each conversation a bond of restoration was born and began to evolve.
I began to see the man I believed he was destined to become emerge little by little. Like a figure approaching out of a fog I saw this man beginning to materialize; the man I imagined in his childhood. The man who would touch the lives of others and lead them, relying on his own trials to guide them past the pitfalls that beset him for more than a decade.
She continued.
“He was a leader. His long term goal was to create a transitional model in the form of some kind of facility that assisted prisoners with re-integration. Your average halfway house is located in a slum in which drugs, prostitution, criminals, and vice of every kind thrive and rule the streets.
He knew only too well that it’s the kind of environment that fuels the revolving door for our justice system. That most men never do escape.
I want to fulfill that dream for him some day. I want to give him the change he ultimately craved for all of us. I want to break the cycle on his behalf.”
Some believe that we come to this plane of existence by chance. That our existence on this planet, bound by time and space, is a mere accident. A random collection of matter among a series of chemical reactions.
Perhaps they are right.
I believe we come here with intention. That we are here to accomplish something of substance. To incrementally lift each other to a higher plane of existence, cooperatively pushing forward the evolution of humanity.
Whether his presence here was inadvertent or intended, Tim ultimately chose to make his fellow man a priority greater than himself but his journey was destined to be brief and frustrated. Much to our chagrin, we would be subjected to impediment after impediment, he and I.
Eons ago I walked with him on a lakefront beach as he danced beside me to and from the lapping waves. Now I watched as he danced again, traversing the resistant barriers society and institutions threw his way.
And this time I danced with him.
