When a Mother's Pain Cries for Her Child

I have spent much of my life advocating for my son from outside prison walls. Right now, as I recover from major surgery, I am experiencing another side of incarceration—what happens when the mother needs her child.

Recovery has made me vulnerable in ways I don't particularly enjoy admitting. There are things I cannot do for myself. There are moments when pain becomes overwhelming. There are nights when getting comfortable feels impossible and days when simply moving from one place to another requires assistance.

And in those moments, sometimes my mother's heart cries for Byron.

Byron calls me every day that the system allows him to. Not to complain. Not to tell me how difficult things are for him. Not to ask me to fix another problem from out here.

He calls to check on me. "Are you hurting?" "Does anything feel different?" "Does that sound normal for this stage of recovery?" "Do you have somebody there with you?" "Are you getting the help you need?" He wants to know that his mother is safe.

When I wrote recently about the extraordinary care his brother, Tre, has given me during this recovery, Byron read it. He called Tre and told his brother how proud he was of him for taking care of their mother.

Behind those walls, Byron has people praying for me. And Byron himself has called and prayed over me—speaking words of faith, strength and spiritual affirmation into his mother's life while I lie here recovering.

Do you understand what incarceration does to a family? My son's body is confined, but his love is not. His concern is not. His compassion is not. His faith is not. His capacity to care for his family is not.

And yet there is a cruelty in knowing that the person whose voice comforts you cannot simply walk through the door. My mother's heart wants to remind Byron how invaluable he is to me. My mother's arms want to hold him.

There are moments when pain hits me and everything in me wants my child—not because Tre and those caring for me aren't doing enough, but because motherhood does not stop when your child becomes an adult. And it certainly does not stop at a prison gate.

What strikes me most is that Byron never complains about his current circumstances when he calls to check on mine. We both know what life behind those walls can be. We don't have to say it. Instead, he tells me: "I can't wait until I'm home so I can take care of you."

Sit with that for a moment.

A man who has spent two decades incarcerated is thinking about coming home—not merely in terms of what the world can give him, but in terms of what he can give to the people he loves. He wants to care for his mother. He wants to be present. He wants to serve his family. He wants to live.

This is one of the things our criminal legal system too often fails to measure when determining whether someone deserves another chance. It measures years. It measures charges. It measures sentences. It measures the worst moments of people's lives.

But where is the measurement for love? Where is the measurement for growth? For compassion? For responsibility? For the incarcerated son who calls home worried about whether his mother has enough help after surgery? For the brother who celebrates another brother for stepping up?

For the man who organizes people behind prison walls to pray for his mother's healing? For the son who cannot physically reach his mother, so he reaches her the only ways still available to him—through a telephone call, through prayer, through words, through love? Those things matter too.

Today I am not writing only as Byron Greene's advocate. I am writing as his mother.

A mother recovering from surgery whose child wants desperately to care for her but cannot. A mother whose heart knows the man her son has become. A mother whose arms still remember what it feels like to hold her child. And a mother who longs for the day when I hear him say, "Queen, I'm home."

And this time, there will be no telephone system deciding whether we can speak. No prison wall between my arms and my child. He will simply be home.

Please continue to stand with us. Continue to share Byron's story. Continue to sign and share this petition.

Because incarceration doesn't happen to one person. Families serve these sentences, too.

~Rev. Jamesina E. Greene, A Mother's Cry