Imagine

Standing in the sun.

If you will, close your eyes, put on your imagining hat and imagine with me. Imagine that your grandson, a good boy, who brings you lots of love and lots of angst, is in jail facing the prospect of a prison sentence.  Imagine also that you and your family do not have financial resources.

His lawyer is court appointed. The lawyer might or might not be doing the best that can be done for your grandson. The sole option offered to your grandson is the shortest prison sentence that could be negotiated.

A couple of years slide by. It is a Saturday or a Sunday. You are standing in line in the sun outside the guard house at the prison along with multiple families also waiting to be permitted to go into the prison to visit their husband, father, son or grandson.

Significant family events have occurred—graduations, marriages, deaths, crises.  Your grandson was not allowed to attend or help in any physical way. He was permitted to visit with you in person in prison, to talk with you on the telephone, and, of course, to pray if he was the praying sort.

Slide more years. Your grandson has been released from prison with $100. He’s covered with tattoos. He doesn’t have much of anything. He doesn’t have many job opportunities—after all, he is a criminal.

You are grateful that you are still alive so that you can hug him again, tell him you love him, that he is a good boy. You want to tell him that he has a good future awaiting him.

Now, with your eyes still closed and your imagining hat still on, is there anything, anything at all, no matter how insignificant you consider it to be, that you can do for those many families and inmates I have just described?