There are things you can lose in jail that never show up on an inventory sheet. Your keys, your belt, and your shoelaces get written down. Your freedom to walk outside, to decide when to sleep, eat, or make a phone call, is obvious. The losses that do not show up anywhere take longer to understand. While I was locked up, two men who mattered enormously to me died. One had known me since childhood. The other had helped me learn how to live sober. Neither one got a goodbye from me.
I am going to keep their names out of this. The people who loved them know who they were, and I do not need to borrow their names to tell you what they meant to me. Fair warning: this entry has fewer jokes than usual. The humor will be back next time. It has stepped outside for some air.
The first story starts on a jailhouse floor. A real floor, in a real jail. You learn the sounds of doors and footsteps. You learn how quickly the outside world becomes something you hear about instead of something you take part in.
One night I had a strange dream. A friend from my childhood showed up. I had not thought about him in a long time. He was not somebody I had been talking about. Yet there he was, as familiar as a memory and as immediate as a visitor. He told me everything was going to be all right.
I took that personally. Why wouldn’t I? I was in jail, frightened, confused, and trying to make sense of a life that had been turned upside down and shaken for loose change. I assumed he was reassuring me about my situation.
When I woke up, the dream stayed with me. As soon as I could get to a phone, I called Billy, the only number I knew. During that call, Billy told me something I had not known. My childhood friend had died four days earlier.
Four days.
I had dreamed about a man I had not thought about in years, heard him tell me everything would be all right, and then found out he was already gone. I do not know how to make that sound ordinary, because it was not ordinary at all.
I believed it was a sign from God. I still think of it that way. Somebody else might call it coincidence. I am not here to prove a supernatural event in a court of law. I have spent enough time around courts, and they have not been especially receptive to my arguments. I am telling you what happened as I experienced it.
What stays with me is what he said. At the time I thought those words were about my jail cell. Now I wonder whether they were also about him. Faith is not the same as having a complete explanation. Sometimes the most honest prayer is simply, Lord, I do not understand. I pray that one a lot. It is short, and it has never once been inaccurate.
He was a truly great man. Childhood friends know a version of us nobody else ever meets. They remember the person before the résumé, before the mistakes we spend years explaining. As we get older, people scatter. We tell ourselves we will make that call when things settle down. Things never settle down, and life does not send a notice saying the next call is the last one.
I wish I could call him now. Just to hear his voice. To talk about something ridiculous we did as kids, of which there was a long list. I wish I could tell him his visit mattered.
Then came another message, and another loss.
This one came through the jail messaging system. A good friend from the recovery community wrote to tell me that my longtime AA sponsor had died. She had known him too.
A sponsor is somebody who has walked part of the road and agrees to help another man find his footing. Sometimes that means advice. Sometimes it means listening patiently while the same fool tells the same story for the nineteenth time and insists that this time the problem is definitely everybody else. I was frequently that fool. He listened every time.
He had been part of my recovery for about ten years. Ten years is long enough for a man to see past the polished version of you. He gets the unfinished chapters. If he is doing his job, he does not confuse loving you with agreeing with you. He did his job. He did not agree with me often.
I wish I could say I always listened. I did not. I am taking more of his advice now, a little late, which I suspect would make him laugh. But the value of a guide is not measured by how perfect the person being guided turns out. It is measured by the willingness to keep showing up. He kept showing up.
When I heard he had died, I was still locked up. I could not go sit with the people who loved him. I could not step outside and let the day carry some of the weight. I could only sit with it, which is what jail mostly offers: time to sit with things.
The two losses were different. My childhood friend belonged to the beginning of my story. My sponsor belonged to the hard work of writing a better middle. One knew me before I had much to confess. The other knew me once confession had become necessary. Both were gone while I was gone. The world does not stop in solidarity when you are incarcerated. People fall in love, get sick, recover, move away, and die. The calendar keeps turning even when your own days all look the same.
Death rearranges the furniture in a man’s mind. Suddenly the argument you wanted to win seems a lot less urgent than the call you never made. So here is the lesson, and it is simple: say the good thing while the person is still here. Thank the sponsor who answers the phone. Make the call. Perfect moments tend to show up wearing ordinary clothes, on an ordinary Tuesday, while you are busy thinking about something else.
Gratitude and sorrow can live in the same heart. Love is not less real because the ending hurts. And I hear that promise differently now. Everything is going to be all right does not mean nothing painful will happen. It means despair does not get the last word.
To the friend who knew me when we were boys: you were a great man. Thank you for the words I heard in a dream. To the sponsor who walked beside me: thank you for the patience and the example. I did not always get it right. I am still trying.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)
— JC
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