It was Thursday. My first full day as a wife of an incarcerated prisoner. As I walked through the dining room to the kitchen for a cup of coffee that morning, I saw Trav’s phone and wallet. I picked the wallet up and held it close to my chest and took pause. For a brief moment, a thought sparked… it felt like he was dead.
I have been blessed with not experiencing much death in my life. As I held his wallet and breathed in his scent, I realized this is the closest you can come to losing someone without them having transitioned from this life. In the moment, I reframed the thought as I found it extreme and outlandish. In speaking with another family who has unfortunately had a very similar experience to ours, they recounted the exact same sentiment when receiving their incarcerated family member’s belongings.
As far as the clothes and shoes Travis was wearing when he entered the prison, those would be boxed up and shipped to my front steps a few weeks later.
I sat his wallet down and retrieved my cup of coffee from the kitchen. As I entered the living room I noticed my phone screen was lit up. It was just barely after 7:00 AM; not a really common time to be receiving missed call notifications. I checked my call log to see a call had just come through not even a minute ago from a Washington DC number.
My reaction to seeing this was an instant panic attack, but I fought to stay calm in the presence of Travis’s mom and sister as I Googled the number to see what federal agency could possibly be calling me from DC. When the FBI agent called me to inform me I would be subpoenaed for the prosecution, the number registered on my caller ID from Washington DC. Another trauma trigger. I had to know who was calling me and what they wanted. At this point I had already begun to share my story publicly. Was it connected? The dread, the angst, the panic, the lack of safety overtook my body, mind, and emotions.
Then Google revealed the source of the call, and I was filled with both relief and disappointment: Federal Bureau of Prisons. I had just missed Travis’s first call. But how was he calling already if he had to quarantine like they had been telling him he would have to do?
It was only about two minutes later when his mom’s phone rang. It was the same number; it was Travis! She had handed me her iPhone as the call was coming in, and I am pretty Apple illiterate. There is a recording you have to listen to notifying you the call is from a federal prison and you will not be charged for the call. In order to accept the call, you have to press 5. I was pressing 5 and nothing was happening. Was I going to miss this call too fumbling around with this phone I didn’t know how to use?! Trav’s mom saved the day and connected the call. Phew!
It was great to hear Travis’s voice. He didn’t sound great, but I had heard him sound a lot worse in the months leading up to where we were now. He did not have to quarantine which was such a huge relief. He had been immediately placed into general population and was in a dorm like housing unit so he did not have to be in a two or four person cell. He said he was really grateful for this too because it allowed him to get up and walk around at night without disturbing anyone else. He had not yet slept, and his anxiety had been really high so being able to walk through the housing unit had been really helpful for him.
All he had available to him was the government issued items. His commissary day (the prison store) would be on Tuesdays. Since he had entered on a Wednesday, this meant he had to wait almost a week to obtain personal items such as paper, pens, sweats, food, shower shoes, etc. He didn’t complain about anything (and still hasn’t to this day), and said he would make the most of it. He had already met one person who he was going to meet with every day for fellowship. This individual was also showing him the ropes, looking out for him with his needs until he could make it to the commissary, and was well informed on both law and prison policies.
For as many short straws that Travis had drawn leading up to being here, this certainly seemed to be best case scenario for his present circumstances. I could not have imagined the weight one simple phone call would release from my shoulders. The relief is unexplainable. He was safe, secure, had more freedom than expected, had as he called it “a good group of guys” around him, and could move around the facility.
Pfizer vaccine and blood clots? Some intriguing things had also begun to surface in the news. The FDA released a study that was published in the journal “Vaccine” which evaluated 14 safety outcomes after the COVID vaccination was administered. It looked at around 17 million people ages 65 and older who had been vaccinated from December 11, 2020 through January 15, 2022.
Researchers compared the rate of observed safety outcomes with expected rates prior to COVID vaccination. They found “modestly elevated risks” in four categories after vaccination with Pfizer’s vaccine. The four areas meeting the threshold for a statistical signal were:
- Pulmonary embolism (when a blood clot gets stuck in the lungs)
- Acute myocardial infarction (heart attack)
- Disseminated intravascular coagulation (an abnormal blood clotting condition)
- Immune thrombocytopenia (a blood platelet disorder)
Some sources were reporting the FDA had finally admitted the Pfizer vaccine was causing blood clots in individuals over 65, and other sources were saying the exact opposite while reporting on the exact same study.
It seems our current information gathering is best served by obtaining the research on your own, reading it, and interpreting it with your own critical thinking skills!
Epstein bank accounts. The US Virgin Islands district attorney sued JP Morgan Chase accusing the financial giant of turning a blind eye to Epstein’s multi-decade sex trafficking operation. The district attorney was fired from her job by the Virgin Island’s Governor just a few days later. There are some interesting allegations in this lawsuit such as Epstein’s estate supposedly agreed to pay the Virgin Islands $105 million to settle a lawsuit that the late Epstein had used his private island for sex trafficking. The lawsuit also alleged JP Morgan knew it was not complying with federal regulations in regard to Epstein’s accounts.
If you want to know more on this case I am going to let you do your own research. The reason this story caught my attention is because a deceased accused sex trafficker and convicted solicitor of prostitution still had estate accounts open? Wait, what? Because all of Travis’s accounts had been closed: bank, retirement, investment, and credit cards. So where does that line get drawn? Which crimes are worthy of bank executives choosing to discontinue services? And when I had called my investor to ask a few questions I discovered there was a murderer who holds accounts with that company. Where are these policies stating the ramifications of breaking a law mean losing your financial and investment services?
As we moved into the new year, the news only seemed to tell tales of more and more bizarre happenings, but I keep watching for the through lines and commonalities. It often feels like there is so very little I can do from the outside to help and support him, so I keep looking for clues in the world around us.
For the first two weeks of his confinement, we were truly blessed. Time happened to work out being on our side. Inmates are given a set number of minutes they can use on the phone, and those calls are allowed in 15 minute increments. The call disconnects if you talk for longer 15 minutes and 1 second. Once an additional 15 minutes passes, the phone account is again available for the inmate to make another call.
Since Travis surrendered on the 11th he had his entire month’s worth of minutes to use. Several days we were able to talk for 30-45 minutes in those 15 minute increments. He was able to call family too without feeling as though the minutes needed to be rationed or allocated. This really helped ease the transition and settle in to this new routine of such limited communication. The monthly time allotment really isn’t plentiful enough to support relationships. He was going to have to decide who he was going to call and how often. And when he had gone in planning on not writing many letters, it was apparent communication outside of chatting was going to have to be used to stay connected with others.
Out here on this side of the situation, I found deep support from my military family friends who had experienced their own experience of separation when either they or their family member had been deployed. While not yet having other supports of family members walking in my shoes, the similar perspective and advice they could offer was reinforcing that this would get easier with time and be over sooner than it seemed.
Maybe, just maybe, it would be over sooner than it seemed because Travis would get to come home earlier? There was reason to be hopeful…
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GiveSendGo.com is a free Christian Crowdfunding site. They are built on the fact as Christians they know money, as helpful as it is, is only part of the equation. Their platform is designed not only to encourage Christians to raise money to make a difference in the world, but to also remind that sharing hope (through prayer submission) is even more important, as it is a lasting solution.
Peace & Love,
Janessa