Memory Matters

A few weeks ago, a new student started working with me in our afternoon GED class. “CJ” is a thin, gray-haired, sixty-two year old man who has spent the last thirty-eight years behind bars. He’s one of the “old time” inmates. Given a life sentence with the possibility of parole (odd, isn’t it, life but parole eligible), he is one of the approximately 7,000 Virginia inmates who are given perfunctory “parole hearings” annually. CJ’s annual review sheet shows his release date as “none.” Still, every year he appears before a parole examiner via Skype, answers a half dozen questions, and waits three weeks to receive his form letter denying him parole.

            CJ reads at less than a fourth grade level. His math skills are only somewhat better. But, a strange thing happens. I spend a fair amount of time reading to the guys in class. I’ll read a “social studies” piece about the Nazis and concentration camps. A day or two later, CJ will put down on paper with perfect recall every camp name, town, battle, General. It’s freaky to see, as if his mind hears the words and the spelling, then creates a photograph of it to be recreated by him on paper. He has amazing recall. “Larry, you said last Tuesday … “It’s a memory thing.

            I regularly read the story of Moses and the Exodus, the wandering through the wilderness by the people of Israel. I find comfort in knowing God never gave up on Moses. He had a plan for Moses’ life and neither his murder of an Egyptian, nor his fleeing Pharaoh to start a new life as a shepherd, would prevent God from carrying out His will.

            One message comes through over and over in the wanderings of the Israelites. “Remember,” They are told, “what your God has done for you.” It’s a message I keep close: “Remember; always remember.”

            I spent almost a year at a jail before transfer to DOC’s receiving unit. During that year I saw daylight exactly five times with three of those times being driven in a police car to court hearings. I arrived at receiving with a sickly pallor. I was a pale as I’d ever been. The first afternoon at receiving, my cell door opened for the daily thirty minute call. I walked out into the sun and heat of an August Virginia afternoon and saw the one-tenth of a mile track around the perimeter of the small rec yard. Without a second thought, I took off and began running. My chest heaved and my legs felt like rubber, but in just a few short laps it all came back, all the runs I’d had in my normal life. And, I ran and remembered running in the woods or around town or on the beach. It was as if the memories wired into my muscles reset the memories in my mind.

            “Remember.” So often guys in here try to forget who they were, where they are from. They create “new” persons who bear no resemblance to the real them. It’s so obvious: Ignore your past at your peril. In almost every letter he wrote to the small churches in Asia Minor, Paul reminded his flock where he came from. He never hid his truth, his life, because the miracle that was Paul’s life was his Damascus Epiphany. “Look where I was; look what I did; and then, God …”

            For a long time, I felt captive by my memories. I tried not to remember; fearful they would haunt my sleep. I would replay scenes over and over trying to understand why and hoping that “this broadcast” would lead to a different result. But, like that first run at receiving, my memories came back, but in a good way. I saw the joy and heartache as pieces of my life with many pieces still to come. And, as guys got to know me, they realized the man they saw wasn’t trying to be somebody he isn’t. As the great philosopher Popeye said, “I am what I am.” What I am is the product of a loving God who never gave up on me even as I went down some paths I shouldn’t have.

            “Remember.” Memory matters. Remember where you came from, who you are, and the path you followed to find your way home. It’s a lesson worth carrying in your heart in this place.