unconditional love, absolute forgiveness
I have been incarcerated for eight years. Throughout that time, my wife’s love has been my beacon of hope.
On Valentine’s Day in 2020, Lily visited me at San Quentin. After 10 years of marriage, I knew something was wrong. She could barely look me in my eyes as she mustered the strength to be there for me and care for me. Lily had been diagnosed with breast cancer, a fact I wouldn’t learn for months because she didn’t want me to suffer. She underwent chemo while I was infected with COVID inside San Quentin. We couldn’t talk to each other by phone for almost a month because the COVID outbreak put me in a quarantined unit where we didn’t have phone service and visits were canceled.
The inability to be there for Lily during her cancer treatment was excruciating. I can only thank God for protecting her because I could not help her battle breast cancer the way she helped save me from the loneliness and isolation that come with incarceration. This is the reality of romantic relationships for incarcerated people, who are forced to watch the people they love endure hardship without being able to lend a supportive hand.
Memories would streak through my mind, my conscience reminding me what a terrible husband I was. The drinking, the drugging, the faithlessness… I was completely, vastly undeserving of her unwavering commitment.
“How come you never left me?” I finally asked her. “
Because I’m too old,” she joked in return, not missing a beat. But this is her humble grace shining through. This is her gentle reassurance that I am forgiven, that her love, even now, knows neither bounds nor limits.
This stunningly beautiful woman never failed to be there for me, no matter my own failings. I know I can never retract the devastation I put Lily through, that I created for my entire family. All that is left to me is to make my life a living amends by mirroring her forgiveness and paying forward the grace she has shown this now humbled man.
The guilt of having been a bad husband is common to many of the men in San Quentin.
“I was drinking about three pints of alcohol daily and I had a problem with meth,” said Loren Mears, who has been incarcerated for six years. “I’m still amazed God allows me to talk to my wife, Wendy.”
For Mears, prison offered an opportunity to sober up and try to save his marriage. He was lucky, because his wife understood that battling his addiction required a power greater than him-self. Over time, Mears committed to Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon and got on the waiting list for the Integrated Substance Use Treatment Disorder program. With the help of these programs, he gained the strength and clarity of mind to focus on repairing his marriage.
Lily had been diagnosed with
breast cancer, a fact I wouldn’t
learn for months because she
didn’t want me to suffer
“I grasped the spiritual component of Alcoholics Anonymous, started going to church; quite frankly I gave up everything else in here.” Mears has been sober nine years. He credits Wendy and his Christian faith for assisting his recovery. He has come to believe that fighting his addiction every day is vital to protecting what he values most. When he speaks to his wife, he often shares a Bible verse and a prayer in order to show how grateful he is to be in a place that has given him the maturity to have a successful relationship with her.
In 2005 the New
York Times estimated
that “between a
married man’s
arrest and the end
of his first year in
prison, 80 percent of
marriages break up.
For female inmates,
the divorce rate is
closer to 100 percent.”
A more recent study
found that each year
of incarceration
increases the odds
that the inmate’s
marriage will end in
divorce (before or
after the inmate gets
out of prison) by an
average of 32 percent.
After 35 years of incarceration, Kevin Fuqua’s marriage has been down a long and challenging road. There are times his wife, Stacie, has considered divorce, and his long incarceration created many struggles for the couple, including a lack of trust and financial strains. Restoring integrity took years, but the two have managed to stay together.
Fuqua nearly made it home to Stacie in 2021, when he received a date from the Board of Parole on May 7, which would have allowed him to go home 150 days later. However, he suffered false accusations related to the state’s unemployment check scandal and had to stay incarcerated “pending investigation” for another 24 months.
“[Many of us] understand the scars we have put on our families,” said Fuqua. “Remember, families will put us on a perch, questioning us or challenging us if something goes wrong. We must acknowledge this as we reenter their lives, we must accept any reservations our families have, and recognize the years of endurance and hope they have given to us.”
Fuqua worked hard to develop the deep personal insight and emotional intelligence that his family needed from him. Key to his transformation has been his work as a facilitator of San Quentin’s T.R.U.S.T. program — Teaching Responsibility Utilizing Sociological Training.
“Thank God, Stacie knew I would never jeopardize all the work I have done,” said Fuqua. “She still believes in me,” he said.
The men in this story are just a sampling of the many residents who cherish the loving and forgiving relationships of marriage, and understand the immense healing power of healthy family bonds. Ironically, marriages that were far from perfect can improve while one member is behind bars. We get the opportunity to learn from our mistakes while we are incarcerated. I believe others can do the same if they make use of the tools that are available to them while they are here.
My Grandmother Leona would often complain about how society had deteriorated from the world she once knew. At age 86, she struggled to understand her daughters’ divorces. She worried that the culture of divorce would spread to the next generation. She would often say to me: “Oh Anthony, you and your mother’s generation, you get in arguments with your spouses and go sleep with the neighbors like they do on Dallas and Dynasty (1980s nighttime soap operas). Your generation will never understand what it means to have a true loving relationship.”
I knew what she meant. In her days people stayed together until death, no matter what. True, this locked some people in unhappy relationships, but, for others, it led to strong familial bonds that helped individuals stay afloat. But things have changed. People don’t stay together as much anymore. Too often, intergenerational traumas and other issues disintegrate families. We should take Grandma Leona’s advice seriously and repair the intergenerational trauma that has endured throughout the decades. Incarceration, ironically, provides an opportunity for us to do so.
Sitting in a carceral institution has allowed me — and others like me — to see the true value in having a loving and healthy relationship with another human being — especially a human being like my wife Lily. Some of us have been blessed with an undying commitment and the opportunity to fix what could have been eternally broken.
Wives like Lily, Wendy, and Stacie are rare. But they do give us all hope that marriage isn’t a dying business.
