Friday, November 2nd, 2018
My doctor left the exam room to go to his next patient last Monday. I was about to leave myself when my cell phone rang. Andy, an inmate I had met with several times in the Wright County Jail, had instructed his mother to call me after his sentencing in the Sherburne County Courthouse.
For five long minutes, I experienced the horror of a mother who had just lost her precious son. “My Andy, my Andy, they’ve taken him away from me. He’s innocent and they put him in jail for the next eight years.” She was so disconsolate and sobbing so uncontrollably that I missed half of what she was saying. “Oh Andy, oh my Andy, he’s innocent and they put him in prison for the next eight years. He told me the truth would win out in the end, but it didn’t. What am I to do? I can’t take it.”
It’s now four days later, and I can still hear the horror in her voice and the desperate and grief-stricken lamenting for a son lost. Also burnt into my memory is the last time I met with her son, four days before his sentencing, when he said to me, “I trust that God will take care of me whatever happens, and I believe the truth will win out in the end.”
To be continued next Tuesday