Justice Notes: Homecoming-Part II
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
This week, Justice Notes will pause as we continue the Homecoming story. Part I of “Homecoming” ended with my release. There’s a middle section in this chapter—a difficult, wandering period right after I got home—that doesn’t serialize well. So I’m skipping ahead to the moment where things finally came into focus: seeing myself clearly for the first time, facing the toll those years had taken, and confronting what it means to start over at eighty years old. This is where the story picks back up, still detached, still carrying the lingering remanants of prison camp and trying to conjure some semblance of reconciliation with myself.
HOMECOMING – Part II
My family and others welcomed me. My daughter organized a Zoom call. Nieces, cousins, and siblings. It was nice. Except I saw myself for the first time. I didn’t see it in prison. I was drawn, wrinkled and skinny. Almost malnourished. And old. Really old. I’d lost thirty-five pounds in prison, and all my clothes fell off me. I looked like the old men I’d seen hanging in the lobby of my mother-in-law’s nursing home years before.
My wife spoiled me. The condominium decorated like all our homes was cozy, comfortable and simple. We had moved eleven times before I left for prison. She moved twice more while I was away. Once, temporarily to a friend and then to this new condominium in a gated community on the outskirts of Vero Beach.
Vero is a city of great contrasts. East of US 1 on the “Island” are gated communities on the ocean where America’s wealthiest reside. West of US 1 are the Martin Luther King roadways and everything in between. Our new place was on the most western edge, in a quiet new community where it was easy to remain anonymous. And since I was confined to be inside for three years, other than an hour’s walk four days a week, no one would know I was there.
I aspired to be a writer in college. I always thought there was still one in me somewhere. This was my chance. I’d been writing in prison. Mostly short pieces, prose poems, log verse and streaming narrative fragments. It was impossible for anything else: no library, freezing cold or oppressively hot in the dorm and no privacy. I had all of the time in the world now.
My first priority was my wife. She had managed my absence well. But it was obvious it had taken a toll. Our first conversation was about our financial future. My history was to try and deflect these conversations.
“Where do we go if one of us gets sick?”
“We’ll figure it out. I’m still under Home Confinement.”
“That’s your answer?” she asked. “What can we afford?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answered.
“If one of us dies tomorrow, we have no plans. I visited a funeral place in Vero. I’d be happy with that. A quiet service. You’re going to be eighty years old next month, you know. Do you know your brother still hasn’t buried Judy?” she said, referring to my brother’s wife. She was cremated and the ashes were still on his mantel in Boston.
I don’t remember what I said but I deflected the conversation again.
Two years later, the end of Home Confinement is looming and I’m not looking forward to it. Actually, I’m afraid of it. The moment of release is a kind of fool’s gold: convictions to make amends, start over, re-build a life.
But prison makes the trip home with you, the excruciating self-loathing never leaves you. I had hoped that release might provide a spiritual balm, seeds for growth, promise an epiphany. Though I’m not giving up, it hasn’t happened yet. I’m still trying to overcome the exile, relentless remorse and turning points that passed.
When my brother dropped me off at the airport, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. I’d be going back to Florida, still locked down there by COVID. He was eighty-five and diminishing. So, I told him that I want to be buried in Woodlawn, the cemetery in the Bronx where the family mausoleum resides. My grandfather’s legacy.
A marble tomb with enough plots around it to accommodate generations of DiMennas. The first time I saw it was at my grandfather’s burial. I recall approaching the gates of black steel, the stone gatehouse, two policemen on patrol, the line of limousines, the long slow drive through an entry steeped in flora and trees. The cortege then followed meandering narrow lanes through a steady stream of elaborate headstones and mausoleums on both sides of the lanes.
There were many prominent legends like Houdini and Mayor LaGuardia as we creeped slowly through crossing streets that were surprisingly hilly in parts. Eventually, the cortege came to a stop and my family’s mausoleum of stone and marble came into view out of nowhere. The name DI MENNA inscribed in tall letters on its entrance.
The large crowd of people exited from the long train of limos at the same time, speaking in hushed tones as they exited their vehicles. There was something eerie about all of the beauty surrounding the grave sites: the willow trees in full bloom, azaleas, tall oaks, and right in front of the mausoleum, my grandfather’s casket, covered in roses.
The door of the mausoleum was wide open, so I could see something like a chapel inside with a cross over a kneeling stand. At that time, I swore I would never be buried there. Now I belonged there.
I’d probably die in Florida, and somebody would have to transport me. I thought my brother would understand that, his commitment to the family lore was as strong as ever. Not that I know what he’ll do because he had lived in Massachusetts for the past twenty years and he doesn’t like to talk about those things. His wife, Judy, was cremated and wanted her ashes spread somewhere—which I can’t remember now—but he never did it and never talked about it. Her ashes were still in an urn on his mantle.
“Buried in Woodlawn?” he asked.
“Yeah. Woodlawn,” I said.
“You don’t want to be cremated?”
“No. Do You?”
“I haven’t decided. But I want to end up in Woodlawn too.”
“Did you put Judy there yet?”
“No. She’s still on my mantle.”
“Are you going to do it.”
“At some point.”
“I just can’t see you choosing cremation.”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Well, it’s getting to be time.”
“What about your wife?” he asked.
“She wants to be cremated. She hates hearing about Woodlawn. Wants no part of it. So, what about Judy? Are you going to put her ashes in Woodlawn?”
“Eventually.”
I couldn’t tell if he would do it, but I assumed he’d probably leave it to his kids. I asked him to promise me that if I go first, he’ll get me to Woodlawn.
I don’t know when I came to it—being buried—but I told my wife about it shortly after I was released. She doesn’t like to hear about Woodlawn and wants her ashes spread over Goodwives River near our first house, a charming carriage house on a beautiful, pristine hill that overlooked the river.
We lived there for the first two years of our marriage, before we knew anything about what we were facing, as it was the beginning of our lives, really. But of course we weren’t aware of it, as you never are when you’re young, and the last thing you’re thinking about is how you want to be buried.
But I don’t want to be ashes and spread anywhere because I want to be put in a box and know the weight of me will be felt by some unknowns lowering me down. And it doesn’t matter that they don’t know me, but only that they know there’s somebody in there that was alive once. I’ll take comfort just knowing that.
But please don’t make me ashes and spread me anywhere because no matter where you spread them it’s really nowhere and I was here once, and at least I’ll know that there’s a place that says I was here no matter what I was or wasn’t.
If you’d like to read the complete chapter, here is the link: HOMECOMING
If you’re drawn to the idea of storytelling as self-reckoning, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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