🔵 By Daniel Paul Kirkconnell. Photo by lauragrafie.
Tell me something. If I were to die tomorrow, would you notice? Would you even care? Would your life be changed in any way what – so – ever? Would you feel the loss? Would you feel any guilt? Would you feel burdened? Would you just make excuses of why you chose not to visit me that one time? Was it too hard? Were you too busy? Or for the real reason, I didn’t have money to pay you for that trip? The inevitable will happen to us all one day, but when that day comes for the people you love and you are throwing dirt on their grave, will you ever wish you could trade that dirt for one more hug, one more kiss, one more twinkle of a star? But to what end will that thought really serve you? The moment is past and that person was less valuable to you than that hand full of dirt you now throw at them in death.
MINOR INSIGHT
Notice I titled it “A handful of dirt” rather than “A hand full of dirt.” It was a play on words. A synonym for “handful” is “nuisance.” You could alternatively read the title as “A nuisance of dirt.” There are a few subtle things eluded to in my writing. Another one I feel I should point out is the end. Although I am speaking of the literal hand full of dirt, I am also eluding to the metaphoric “throwing of dirt” in the way people talk lowly of people after their death to numb their own guilty consciences even if that person made huge strides to change themselves for the better.
I wrote this because I have been in prison since 2019 and I haven’t had a single visit from my family or friends. People who claimed to love me at one point. Some claim to have forgiven me. It had gotten so bad that I would go months sometimes without my family picking up the phone. It is now April 24th, 2025 s I write the explanation so you can understand a little of what inspired me to write this. I have received three visits so far since my last birthday on April 20th, 2024, by my best friends mom. An older woman with no real money to speak of came to visit me and wanted to know who her son was calling his friend. She came to our Mentor graduation and held her arms out toward us both and said with a tearful smile, “I am so proud of you, my boys!” And then she hugged us.
“My boys”, it reverberated in my head. She showed me love equal to her own son. While I took a shower that night I cried as the emotions hit me in the only place a person can be alone in my prison dorm. I had felt the love of a mother for the first time in a long time. When she hugged me I really felt the love. I felt hated by people for so long, I hadn’t realized I didn’t know what that love felt like anymore. Bitterness had crept into my heart and I was fighting it and begging my Creator to stop it. And then there she was, my answered prayer. The bitterness began melting away.
The hurt and loneliness is still there, but I am continuing my growth with new hope, that if a complete stranger can forgive me and love me, then maybe one day so can those in my family. Maybe as you read this, I can speak the words that others in captivity can’t bring themselves to utter or know how to articulate such deep emotion intertwined with remorse and self-loathing. Don’t forget your loved ones. You never know if the last time you saw them was your last time ever seeing them again.