My friend is lost. My friend, Marvin (not real name), is lost. He is a African- American male in his 50’s that left a note to his wife a few nights ago that he was going to check himself in at the mental health complex since he had been seriously thinking of committing suicide all that day. His wife called the mental health complex and the police and there was no record of him at either place.

Marvin has lived a hard life with a felony conviction when he was young stigmatizing him and hurting his opportunity for employment. He had suffered a serious beating that seemed to have triggered his mental illnesses. As many in this position he had turned to drugs and drink for relief only to find that it made him worst.

About five years while he was straight he met my friend Carol,(not real name), who at the time was a member of same Church as we. They got married but the marriage quickly was troubled as my friend Carol got very sick with great pain. Marvin was in and out of her life. In the meanwhile she became more and more in pain and all the medical solutions for relief have not worked. She, understandably, had a hard time dealing with her own illness let along his problems.

About a year or so ago my friend, after sometime in jail and a treatment center, seemed to have really got his life together and he and Carol were united. He could not find a job but with her small income they were able to rent a nice small apartment. Marvin walked the streets for miles around the apartment looking for a job but could not get one. He stopped taking his medicine for his brain illness and had good days and bad days in his care of Carol. She needs a reliable living companion to stay in the apartment as her pain gets worse.

Marvin was very intelligent. I remember taking him to get his driving license which had expired causing him to have to redo the written and driving test. One time I was reading the book “The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” He said he had read it a few years ago and that it was excellent. I challenged him since the book, to my knowledge, had just come out. But then I looked at the copy-write date and found out the book had come out a few years earlier in another edition with different name. He was, sadly, living the message of the book.

Marvin and I had some good heart to heart conversation as often we waited together for Carol on her many hospital and doctor visits. I was glad when he had got himself together since the burden of driving Carol to her many medical appointments was lifted from me. She has a van but cannot drive or even sit up. She laid in the backseat as one of us drove.

Marvin had no possessions in life and was torn by his inability to find a job due to his criminal record and his skin color. Once I had picked him up somewhere to take him to the new apartment they had rented and all he had with him was a small gym bag that contained his few possessions.

He tried to do a little legal “hustle” to get some money but he got more and more frustrated with life and not finding a job. Gradually he went back to drinking when he could. This strained his relationship with Carol whose pain grows worst.

Hopefully my friend, although he had no money and possessions, is still alive somewhere and just lost.

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