Following Meredith’s piece in Justice Notes this week, I remembered this entry from my prison journal. Something every parent experiences—the child grows up and becomes an adult. A form of parental betrayal and failure.
MEREDITH
How do you lose a
daughter?
She loved lullabies
and nighttime fairy tales.
A fuzzy little
elephant—Celeste;
the one she took to bed
all those years.
Was it the day we
lost Celeste;
when all of us,
especially her mother tore
through every
cranny and closet,
as her brothers stood stunned
in their doorways,
while even their mother’s fury
couldn’t find her.
She was only seven
then.
My wife and I
huddled in bed for hours after;
she couldn’t stop
crying.
Was that the
beginning?
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