Day: July 22, 2022

When you are in jail/prison you have to try to disconnect yourself somewhat from what’s going on at home. You get to a place in your mind that “this is my temporary home” for now. This doesn’t mean that you forget about loved ones, or you don’t care. There are just certain things you can’t involve yourself in, otherwise you’ll go crazy. The only thing that I could do each day and each night was pray to God to ask him to protect me, my family, my friends, and everyone around me. I would ask for him to keep them safe and provide for them as much as possible. His mercy never failed to amaze me. I would call home often. They had a sign-up schedule that rotated on the block. That way, everyone had a chance to get different call times and for the most part you could get a second phone sign up. My priority was to call home to my husband and kids, then my parents. After that I would switch off to call my sisters, and my friends. I knew going into prison that my mom wasn’t doing well, but she was stable. She had been diagnosed with end stage COPD and was doing as well as she could. I just prayed that she wouldn’t catch a bad cold or a lung infection. Then, I called home and my husband says, “I have something to tell you. I don’t keep secrets from you, and I think you need to know.” He proceeds to then tell me, “Your mom is in the hospital and she’s not doing very well. He said it’s bad Jodie and she didn’t want you to know. ” Now, you all need to understand that my mom and I are close. She was trying to prevent me from having to deal with this somewhere that I couldn’t really deal it. Especially until she knew more. She didn’t blame my husband for telling me and understood why he did. I then called her to find out exactly what we were looking at and the other possibilities. I’m standing, at a phone, along a wall with 3 other people and a block full of people staring out their doors with thousands of eyes on me and I’m trying to hold it together. You know how when you want to cry so bad, but you’re shaking, and you can’t breathe. -it was that sort of cry. I am a lot different than many people I know. My only way to then take this all in was to go into prepare mod. I first messaged my counselor to find out if it was possible to get a furlough to go to a funeral. Well short of the long of it is, it would have cost over $2,000+ just an estimate I would have also needed to get a judge to approve it. I knew my mom would not want me or anyone else to spend that kind of money. To top it off, when you do go you can’t stay for the service. You’re handcuffed and shackled with the officers along with you. So, you don’t even get to properly grieve. The other option was through the chaplain’s office to either do a final goodbye video visit or have the funeral taped and I could watch it. I talked to my mom and sisters, and we came up with a plan that IF this would occur, they would come to visit with me. We would then have mom cremated per her wishes then we would have a celebration of life after I came home. It was the only thing at the time we could come up with that set well with everyone. Well, I’m happy to report that none of this mattered, because she is absolutely fine. God is good all the time! Here, they now think that she might have had covid before covid was known. Remember when they were saying that they think there were people really sick that prior December before in March we all knew about it? Well, they think she might have been one of those cases. Whatever it was, God had a different plan and knew she wasn’t ready for him yet. She celebrated her 70th birthday not long ago. To this day, her and I both pray Psalms 91. Here is a copy for you to enjoy!