Serving Life

I just watched an unforgettable documentary on Netflix: a story of prisoners in Angola Penitentiary who become hospice volunteers.

These young men look like strong, healthy basketball players, but they are lifers, sitting beside the dying in prison and doing everything they can to make their deaths less lonely.

The ones chosen for this work are good men who did bad things. By the end of the film, you see them doing in prison what--to me--must be the hardest job of all, and doing it with love and respect for their fellow inmates.

I felt drawn in to their individual stories: the crimes that got them there in the first place, their insistence on taking responsibility for their actions, and their dedication to changing their lives while serving life sentences.  Drug addiction is a common denominator,  abandonment by their parents another.  But one man--who probably represents many--had a "good childhood" and still "took the wrong road."

"My daddy always told me 'Don't make your bed hard,' but I made my bed hard," one said.

Through volunteering, some learn empathy for the first time.  "That could be me lying in that bed," they say.

If young people could have an experience of volunteer training and work before they take the wrong roads, what a different world it would be!