The Last Goodbye

Hospice experiences from within Stateville Correctional Center.

By Craig Harvey

The topic of life and death can be difficult to discuss among healthy people in a free society. However, it is almost a taboo discussion in a prison society, where some will die and many are unhealthy. So, when it comes to writing this piece, I have struggled like a 1 year old taking their first steps. The struggle is one filled with the pain of those who passed away.

In 2019, I began an assignment in Stateville's healthcare unit, where I unofficially worked in hospice care. I say “unofficially” because there was no formal training or acknowledgment by the staff for the work I did until the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, my motivation for working in hospice was inspired by my own past traumas.

Many of the men I sat with reminded me of my grandparents, who both passed away when I was 13 years old. My grandmother lived the final seven years of her life confined to a wheelchair due to paralysis of the entire left side of her body. My grandfather spent his final days with both legs amputated due to his alcoholism. So, I was a hospice worker, in a sense, for my grandparents when I was a child.

My approach to working in hospice care while incarcerated was to repair and restore my relationship with humanity. Failing to properly heal from my own trauma caused me to hurt other humans. The environment infected me to the point where my mere presence was like an infectious disease to the community I came from.

At some point during my incarceration, I began to heal, and my goal became to not be a product of my environment, but instead to create an environment out of who I am. Instead of producing more trauma, I wanted to produce healing.

My very first day working in the healthcare unit in the summer of 2019, I was thrown fresh out of the frying pan and into the fire. My shift began at 1:30 p.m., and around 3:30 p.m., there was a Code 3 announced over the radio. In an instant, it was complete pandemonium.

The nurses and med-techs were running around gathering medical supplies: first-aid kits, defibrillators, a gurney. Doors were locked as the healthcare workers were instructed to remain in the infirmary. Within minutes, I observed five nurses push a gurney carrying an unresponsive Black male, with a nurse on top of him operating a chest compression device. After about 20 minutes, administrators, nurses, the coroner, and a couple more unidentified suits with internal affairs filled the room. Their body language was easy to read: Sam M. is dead!

I did not cry for Sam's demise in that moment because I only knew him at a distance. Also, that entire scene was similar to the trauma I was all too familiar with and that I learned to cope with but not heal from. My healing process began on that day, and my greatest emotional breakdown came when a man who suffered from two cancers passed away in prison because he had no place to live.

His name was Don B. He was short, and his complexion was kissed by the sun. He had no problem flashing a smile, highlighting that he had almost no teeth—just three or four randomly positioned in his mouth. I can't help but chuckle to myself as I envision his smile in this moment. Also, because of his stomach cancer, he had a hernia in his stomach that looked as if someone inside him was trying to punch through his stomach. As grotesque as it may have appeared, my goal was to ensure that he felt comfortable around me instead of insecure about his appearance.

Mr. B grew up on the west side of Chicago during the 60s and 70s, so much of his dialogue was like a Blaxploitation movie script. I'd greet him like: "What's up old-timer?" He would reply: "What's happenin', baby? Dig, when you get a few ticks, put some heat on this water for me, roadie." This was part of our daily routine, even though developing a routine was difficult because he had trouble remembering—a result of his brain cancer. Some days he would even forget how to talk, and whatever he was attempting to articulate would translate into mumbles and almost child-like gibberish. Amazingly, even on those bad days, he never forgot his childhood address in the 50-something hundreds of West Jackson Blvd.

Although I had no formal training on how to engage with a patient suffering through this experience, I knew what I felt in my heart, and that was this: the nurses don't care for so-called convicts and criminals, nor does the state, and sometimes not even our loved ones. Therefore, I felt obliged to care for the men who represented a potential future I would experience if I failed to fight for my freedom. As a result, I extended my fight for freedom, and my mission became to get Mr. B out of prison.

The old-timer would often tell me, "Dig roadie, let them people know it's time for me to go...and I'm ready!" I attributed his declaration to a desire to get out of prison, along with some delusion due to his condition. Then, on one of his better days after he returned from the bathtub, I was cleaning his cell and overheard him ask the officer to check his out date. To my surprise, I learned that his out date had come and gone.

The following week, the counselor came to the healthcare unit and had him sign his parole violation papers. That's right! He was MSR'd (mandatory supervised release) a couple of weeks prior, but because he didn't have any placement, he was violated. His terminal illness made it complicated to find placement, and he seemed to have no familial support.

So, my mother, brother, and I began working together, contacting nursing homes to find Mr. B a placement. The first time I put him on the phone with my mother, he said, "Dig roadie, I respect the game, so I ain't gonna do no mackin' on ya moms." I can't help but laugh at the memory. Even in that condition, he requested that I keep him with a clean shaved head and a crisp goatee. After several failed attempts to speak with nursing homes, my mother had a breakthrough with the Salvation Army out west on Madison. My mother pretended to be his sister, and she was told to contact them the Tuesday following Labor Day 2019.

We were racing against time because his condition was worsening each day. The Labor Day week came and went with no one at the Salvation Army taking my mother's call. Mr. B asked me each day, with great anticipation, "What's happenin', roadie? I'm ready to go." After a couple of weeks of saying, "Old timer, I'm waitin' for them to respond," a letter came in the mail from the Salvation Army marked “Return to Sender.”

Within days of me communicating to him that our attempts failed, he died on September 17, 2019, at 3:30 p.m. I was mentally and emotionally crushed. This man died in prison because he didn't have a place to go.

The most important lesson I learned from him was to never go to someone else's home to clean up. Your presence is what is important.

On his bad days, I would sit in the cell with him, but to do so, I would freshen it up, and his response was, "Why are you f’ing with me? I don't come to yo spot cleanin' up, don't come to my spot cleanin' up. Sit yo ass down!"