“You are now receiving a free collect call from an inmate at Corrigan Correctional Facility. To accept this call, please press one.” 

I miss my mom. She’s not dead, she’s very much alive. Her heart is still beating, but I think it’s hollow inside, almost like she’s waiting to die, but never expecting to fully live. 

I miss the person she was before he went to prison. Before he tried to convince her of his innocence, before she reached into her savings to try to save him. 

I miss who she was before I saw the horror on her face in the kitchen, after she read the medical examiners report. Before she realized the child she raised, raised his fist into blood stained anger, into damaged furniture, into receiving charges for battery and manslaughter. 

“You are now receiving a free collect call from an inmate at Corrigan Correctional Facility. To accept this call, please press one.” 

I miss my mom, and who she was before she got wrapped up in denial. I miss the way her ears would attune to any conversation, and her eagerness to share anecdotes, glimmers, small wins and 80’s songs.

I miss the way she used to anoint every place we lived in with oil. I miss her fiery passion that could coax paint off the walls. I miss how she would never stand down from a fight. 

I hate her excitement at the possibility he will ever get out. I can’t stand how in conversation with him, she seems elated. They use their fifteen minutes to play pretend, to speak of all the things he will do when he gets out. She is grateful the lawyer will be coming to speak with him soon. There is nothing he has to worry about, right?

Wrong. 

I will never press one, because now there is a son who when he misses his father, he will have to visit a cemetery or hold an urn in his hands. There is no more holding hands. There is no holding conversation anymore. There is no chance that he can be resurrected from the dead. He is gone. 

I will never press one, because where is the uproar for the man who lost his life? Where’s the compassion for his family who mourns daily? Is justice only for the living, or is it for the dead?

I will never press one, because I remember cowering in fear as a child, anxious of what you would do next. But, I am not afraid of the dark anymore. I have not become what you are. 

Mom grieves the person you were. I grieve what you’ve always been. Mom grieves the life that used to include you. I grieve a version of my life, where you never get the chance to destroy anything and anyone I love.

I hope you never get out of prison, and have the opportunity to ruin anyone else’s life ever again.