Love In Prison

Love (for me) is a total surrender of yourself (mind, body & soul), an unconditional giving. There are different kinds of love, love for animals, mother's love, love for plants, couple's love, etc. I want to talk about love between couples, even though I am not an expert in the matter of love because I have only one love in my life. I fell in love with my husband and the father of my sons when I was 13 years old, it was a true and one time love. Pure, unconditional, beautiful and without limits kind of love. I truly loved him. During my 10 grim years of incarceration, the pain and the suffering from being away from my sons is so deep that there has been no room in my life/heart for love, however I have witnessed all kinds of couple's love, even the unthinkable ones. I truly believe that there is a part of us that never grows, the child inside us dies when we die. When I see how couples fall in love inside prison, it brings back memories of my high-school years, like sending little notes to each other, offering candy, talking with their eyes, sending messages with a third party of where to meet, etc. I have seen officers , even executive officers falling in love with inmates, I know what they went through to maintain their relationship inside prison, how they hid themselves inside freezer, warehouses, etc, to kiss each other or have sex, how they had to ignore each other in front of others, how they sent anonymous notes to each other and in the end, the officer leaves everything, job, wife, government benefits, even the country to marry the inmate upon her release. I also have seen how officers abuse and lie to inmates to gain sexual favors. There are some, wild, crazy and violent love affairs too, like the ones between inmates (same sex) some of them physically abuse each other, fight with others to defend there lovers, wiling to go to the shu (hole) and have 2 or 3 lovers at the same time, there is also love between prisoners by letter from one prison to another, love between drivers (UPS< DHL< truck drivers, etc) and inmates, outside contractors and inmates, inmates with other inmate's famly or relative, etc, but there is one instance of love that I admired and enjoy watching and it is of my co-worker's. She is over 60 and her husband is over 70, he is at the nedium facility, and he is very sick (in a wheelchair), another prisoner carries him around. Every morning he stands close to the wire fence to see her pass by. The distance is about 100 yards and there is a thick wire fence in between, the vision is blurry, neither can see each other clearly, so they both use a white piece of cloth to wave to each other. He does not like her to see him in the weelchair so, he stands just to wave at her, after they wave to each other they go inside and write a letter to each other every day. They both have to be very carefull because if the authorities find-out that they wave to each other, she will receive an incident report, will be shipped out of the camp and he will be sent to the SHU (hole). No matter how cold or hot it may be, he is always there on the other side of the fence waiting for her. They have been married for over 40 years they are firs-time, non-violent offenders, no drug, medicare or identity theft charge, but they both receive a 20 years sentence. I belive that he will die inside prison and she will not be by his side. We do not have the gas-chambers like in the NAZI era but we do have draconian sentences that an elderly will not survive and no human being should have to endure. I love you all. Yraida