Death Row in Texas
Today John and I got a letter from one of the prisoners who was in our writing workshop for two years. That prisoner has served many years and is due to be released soon, but he was recently moved to the prison where death row is located, in Huntsville. From his cell, he can see the protesters who gather with signs every time there’s an execution. He says there’s a Subway Sandwich shop right behind where the protesters gather, and he notices both the protesters and the people buying sandwiches, going on with their lives. He’s on the “grounds keeping crew.” He says their job is to cut the grass, move furniture, plant flowers, and dig graves and bury prisoners who die in custody–both those who are executed and those who die of what the state calls “natural causes.” He writes, “We bury on average three or four a week. At the cemetery sometimes there are family members who show up. I used to think myself hard, not moved by other people’s feelings. Now I look at those family members and feel tight in the throat. Worse, sometimes we go out there and drop three or four coffins in the holes. No family to say goodbye, nothing.” Others in the workshop have talked or written about what it’s like when someone dies in prison. Within minutes the body disappears, and before a day has passed another prisoner is assigned to that bed. Death doesn’t scare us; invisibility does. Being ignored, forgotten, treated like a disposable thing, instantly replaceable: that chills us, makes us feel “tight in the throat.” We want our passing to be noticed. Yesterday I saw the film Paradise Now, a work of genius that takes us into the minds and spirits of two young men who decide to become suicide bombers. When one of the “martyrs” makes his final video, delivering his speech to the world and his farewell to his family, the camera doesn’t function properly, so he has to say his farewell speech all over again; the second time he delivers his speech, it comes off just short of absurd, and two of the “crew” stand by, calmly watching and munching on the lunch his mother prepared for him that morning.
Tags: Prisons and Prisoners, Texas
Kendall
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