Today, I visited Division 8 RTU once again.  This is the hospital division of the jail, where people who need medical care while waiting for their trial are housed.  Sometimes they’re in jail because they committed a crime, and often enough they are incarcerated because they’re mentally ill.  I lately found out that this is the largest mental hospital in Cook County, and it’s possibly the largest in the country.  It’s maybe the most dangerous part of the jail because of the mentally ill population.  When someone’s mentally ill, sometimes for no apparent reason, they lose self-control and become violent.

In any case, today I had 4 requests for a visit from a chaplain.  These requests are sent to Kolbe house, and they forward them to me.  So, I go to the first person and visit.  He wants a prayer and a little reassurance because there was a fight on the tier (dorm) and he was afraid.  We had a good visit.  Then another visit, then another one.  All good visits.  After the third visit, the officer by the door of the tier asks me if I have a few minutes to speak with another person.  Sure, I tell him, and ask him the situation.  “He’s had a few deaths in the family, and put in a request for a visit from a chaplain.”  “Ok,” I answer him, I’ll talk to him.

He comes out of the tier, and we’re standing in the hallway.  He’s a black man, maybe in his 50’s and walks with a cane.  We’re standing close to each other so I can hear him, and the officer is standing in the doorway watching the guys inside the tier and also watching and listening to us.  He explains, “I lost my nephew a couple of weeks ago… and I lost my mother last week.  I don’t want to talk to no psychologist.  My father is a pastor… I want to talk to a spiritual person.  Do you have some time?”  “Sure,” I answer him, “how can I help you?”  To make a long story short, he explained that they were going to make a program for his mother’s funeral and he wanted me to help him write the obituary.  Then he could read it to his brother who was making the program.  “Oh my goodness,” I thought to myself, “this is going to be a tough one.”  Imagine that your mother dies and you’re in jail and can’t go to her funeral.  How sad.

He starts asking the officer about the song that has the words in it, “you only have one mother,” and he sings a little bit of it.  The officer starts getting tears in his eyes, and me, too.  He says, “I can’t really think very clearly standing here in the hallway.”  “Of course you can’t, I answered him.  When my mom died I could hardly stand up.”  He asks the officer if we can use the little room across the hallway to sit down.  The officer says ok, but he needs help so he can watch us and have someone else watch the guys in the tier.  Nobody has time… so after a few minutes, I ask, “How about if I come inside the tier with him, and we sit at one of the tables.”  They have stainless steel tables and stools bolted to the floor so they can eat meals in the tier.  The officer says, “ok, as long as you are ok with it Father.”  I told him it was fine, and so I went into the tier with the guy.  All the other guys are coming toward us, and the officer tells them we need a little privacy.

So, I sit down with the guy, and I ask him for some words about his mother.  He tells me a few things, and we end up writing a beautiful and poetic, and short, obituary.  I read it to him and I start getting all choked up.  I tell him, “You’re going to have everybody in the place crying.”  He’s crying and says, “I know, I know.”  The two of us sit there and cry for a minute.  He’s crying and he says, “thank you so much.  I don’t know why God sent you to me today, but thank you so much.” I told him, “You know, pretty soon, you’re going to see your mom again.  I hear my mom’s voice in my dreams, and pretty soon, I’ll hear it again in heaven.”  He nodded yes, and I got up to go.  “God bless you and your family.”  He said thank you again, and I left.

On the elevator on the way out, the officer who was watching all this happened to be going out of the building.  He’ d been getting pretty emotional over the whole thing, too.  “I thought that was an amazing visit today,” I said.  “That was surely God’s grace at work, that you came in at that moment,” he answered, “He really needed that visit, and his request for a chaplain wasn’t even in the system yet.”  “Yes, it was,” I answered, “yes it was.”