In the Shadow of Death

As I sit here quietly at my improvised desk using a steel foot locker as my stool while slowly sipping from a well-worn plastic cup of barely lukewarm coffee, the silence of the still early morning is unexpectedly broken by the sound of a small bird chirping outside. I turn to look outside through the dusty glazed window but my view is obstructed by the walls of steel bars and wire mesh that deliberately separate me from that world beyond. Hidden from sight that small bird continues to sweetly serenade me and momentarily I am able to forget just where I really am. Welcome to my world - Florida’s death row. Recently I “celebrated” my 25th consecutive birthday here in my solitary cage, isolated and effectively abandoned by the world beyond those fences. I am but one of so many thousands of others who have been not simply sentenced to death, but maliciously condemned to a fate far worse than death: to a virtual hell few could even begin to imagine as we each slowly waste away in a cold concrete crypt come up inevitably overwhelmed by the ever-eternal isolation of solitary confinement not merely for years, but for decade after decade after decade, all the while awaiting the uncertainty of our fate. Once upon a time I was a young man with my whole life still before me. But now I look back and that life is long gone. My then young children are now all grown and I am now a grandfather many times over. As I look in my small, plastic mirror and I confront an image of a man slowly showing the signs of age. Many others have been here much longer than even I, some now almost 35 years. Like myself, these were once young men who have slowly succumbed to the inevitable ravages of age and the relentless degradation of the body and soul. Death row is becoming a geriatric ward where with increased regularity death by natural causes and old age claim us one at a time. In recent months many more have passed on… Charles Globe, Burley Gillian, William Elledge all passed away of "natural causes" while William ("Bill") Coday cut his stay short by self-inflicted injury. Many more are battling terminal illnesses, with cancer and diabetes becoming increasingly common. But that's only the obvious physical consequences of living and dying on death row… it's the psychological trauma that truly takes its toll. Someone once asked me where I find the strength to survive being condemned to death and continuously kept in isolated solitary confinement for so long – and I laughed. It would be only too easy to say that I find my strength in the hope and the fate that might sustain me, but I know I’d be lying. The simple truth is that I have survived only because I don’t have a choice - the alternative would be to surrender myself to an unjustified fate and sacrificing the hope that I so desperately cling to that “justice” might yet prevail. But I know too that for all the physical ailments that afflict those around me, it is my own mental degradation that I fear the most as if I ever did give up my illusory "hope", has only to many here have already done, then I have surrendered myself to a living death that I cannot hope to survive. Being condemned to death in America isn’t about facing a state-sanctioned execution as much as it is about the malice and vengeance that our society unmercifully imposes upon us under the pretence of “justice”. It is not enough to kill our bodies and consume our flesh – but they must break our very will to live and maliciously reduce us to something less than human. This entire humane existence we call "death row" is meticulously designed to methodically break each of us psychologically and maliciously reduce us to something less than human before they ritualistically sacrifice our body to state-sanctioned death at the hands of a hooded executioner. Being condemned to death is not about waiting to die, but about awakening each morning and struggling each day, every day for the strength and will to want to live despite that ever-growing part of you that wants to welcome death. It’s about surviving each day, every day, one slow day at a time, knowing – and never for a moment being allowed to forget – that you are warehoused here waiting to die, all too often even in spite of being wrongfully convicted and condemned to death for a crime you know you did not commit. It’s about the faded photographs of a life that once was – and the lost dreams of a life that will never be. It’s about struggling to find the strength to stay positive when writing to family and friends, never daring for a moment to show just how much of a toll this place takes of you for fear that your own negativity may drive them away, yet inevitably they do all drift away and loneliness and abandonment become only too familiar. As the many years pass, it then becomes about desperately clinging to the fading memories of family and friends who have inevitably drifted away rarely ever to be heard from again, and the anxiety each of us knows only too well each night when they bring the mail as we anxiously await at our cell door silently praying that our name will be called and a letter from a loved one might just come our way – and the overwhelming sense of despair as days become weeks, and weeks become months without any mail at all, and then knowing that we are not only condemned to live alone, but to die alone. I’ve now sipped my last drop of coffee and the bird is long gone… yet another life passing through the cold and lonely shadow of death that entombs me.

Michael Lambrix

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