Our friend Ian has been in prison for over ten years already. He has served 2/5 of his prison sentence. Ten years ago, I was only 31 and my veggie tattoo was practically brand new. Ten years ago, Bauer was 5, Cash was 2, and the girls weren’t born. I have talked about Ian before. He is one of the five people I write letters to. He and his wife were in our small group more than ten years ago when we lived in Illinois.
Lately TJ and I have been trying to help Ian with some tax forms. Back in October, a federal trial court ruled that the IRS could not deny the CARES Act Economic Impact Payment to a person solely because that person is incarcerated. Ian needed our help to find some documentation in the bin of his belongings in our garage, so TJ went through his things a couple times to find the right papers. It took two nights of me and TJ sitting down together to read Ian’s last few letters and the IRS form to figure out how to assist him. But we got it done, and it felt good to be helpful and to do it together with TJ.
I have learned about prison time through our interactions with Ian and on Ian’s behalf. Things move slowly in the prison system, but they do keep moving. Just when one would be tempted to give up, there’s a tiny movement: another letter arrives with the inmate stamp, an email gets approved through the prison email system, another letter gets written and sent (my job and my joy), a needed document is found after two tries looking, lockdown happens and then gets called off, a degree is completed over months and years, and before you know it, an incarcerated friend is almost halfway through his sentence.
There’s a passage from a novel I read years ago that comes to mind:
“I went back to the living room and out onto the terrace. The air was cool and the lights of the city shimmered. The little planes no longer circled the Empire State Building, but it was still a view that practically conjugated hope: I have hoped; I am hoping; I will hope.”
Prison, strangely, signifies hope for me. Prison is not the way Ian’s life was supposed to have gone, yet he has made a good life for himself in a very difficult situation. That he keeps going, keeps caring, keeps writing, keeps trying is a testament to the fact that nothing is ever beyond hope. That TJ and I get to come alongside and wait these long years out with our friend is a gift to us in ways I could not have imagined were I not experiencing them. It is certainly not one-sided (us helping him). Ian writes long letters on looseleaf paper, giving details of prison life, which is the very minutiae I love. Ian asks what the kids are into each year before their birthdays come around, and then he makes creative cards for each of them. Ian sends me and TJ things as well, like this recent anniversary card and paper flower that his cellie made.
Another thing TJ tackled recently was to look up Ian’s credit reports and send one of those to him. Ian wants to work on repairing his credit. Again, these things take time, even in the real world, but to watch a person who has lost so much care about something like this is hope on top of hope. Ian asked if I could look up a few books recently and send him a list so he could request some of the books from a “Books for Prisoners” program. Again, time crawls. He writes a letter to me to ask me what to look up. I sit down one night and find some books on topic. I print a few pages out to show him what I’ve found. I write a letter back and include the printouts. Ian requests books from the prisoner program. Eventually he may get a book or two. We will send him a couple of books too. Thankfully we are allowed to have books sent to the prison. There is so much we can’t send or do, but somehow love and showing up in the little ways we can is, and always will be, enough. Am I beginning to sound like my beloved Annie? I sure hope so.
“I saw that they [the prisoners] had nothing but the present, the insides of their minds, glimpses of natural beauty, library books, guilt, rage, growth, and one another. I saw that these lives were of value. ”