1/17/2009

I think a vital piece of me has definitely died since coming to prison. This last week a young native inmate lost her sister to suicide. She left behind two kids and isn't the first to kill herself in the family. I watched this kid bawl and sob as he talked to his mother on the phone. Later he was given a portable stereo and some Native American music CD's and given the privacy (except for cameras) of his own room in the prison chapel. For two days he wept and mourned in private. It should have been gut wrenching, touching, or something ... but I felt nothing. Well that is, felt nothing until I saw the same inmate back in the cell hall yucking it up with his gang friends, talking the usual gang violence and acting out the same gang pseudo-macho behavior. Then I felt like digging my fingers into his brain and forcing together the synapses to make him recognize his twenty-three year behavior of bullshit violence and the connection to the tremendously high suicide and other violence found on his reservation. But who am I to lecture about how to deal with anything let alone a loss of family. I can't even deal with my shit.

The other thing that happened this week is I found out that I don't have the right to die. A 60+ year old man had a heart attack while working in laundry. He's a lifer and has been here a LONG time. They (prison staff) actually did CPR until the ambulance came and used the paddles on him to shock him back to life. Then sped him away and had to use the paddles on him twice more. Well, long story short, the old fart lived and is back in population already. I made the comment that I should visit with the prison lawyer and make sure there is a DNR (Do Not Recessitate) on my meidcal recoreds only to be told that the state owns me and is liable to do everything in their power to save my life. Not only do I find this silly since this state has the death penalty, but I'm appalled that a base right, a human right of DNR is thrown out the window. What the hell is wrong with this state, country, world?