(Originally Posted on MySpace in May of 2005)

            A wise friend of mine observed a couple of years ago that we would never stop talking about Patricia and I. She cited several reasons. First, there was my willingness to talk about the events. Second, Patricia always seemed to find a way to add to the story. Finally, she felt that Fate dictated that the two of us would continue to generate drama until one of us died. She felt Fate took a perverse satisfaction in piling impossible event on impossible event until even the worse soap opera looked like a congressional fact finding report when compared to our story.

            I went to the parole hearing on the fifteenth without a great deal of hope. Simply put, I believed we missed our last chance for a positive outcome, our last chance for some peace because the Department of Corrections continued to ignore the Judge's orders and made only gestures at her rehabilitation.  Patricia's latest suicide attempt provided the final proof. She spent the required ten days in Los Lunas for a mental evaluation and then returned to Grants. On April 24^th, she began in-house parole. These two actions, the discharge from Mental Health and the placement on parole demonstrated that the Department intended to ignore any inconvenient indications of Patricia's mental health problems and they simply dedicated themselves to pushing her through the system.

            Another indicator of the problem is the near complete failure of the parole system at the women's prison in Grants. Nationally, sixty percent of prisoners return to prison for parole or probation violations. Women released from Grants return at a rate of eighty-eight percent according to an article written by a State Senator and published in a recent edition of Alibi.

            In our case there are easy answers for the prison system failure. None of the rehabilitation ordered by the Court occurred and the parole board clearly believes its role is to relive overcrowding by releasing inmates without regard to their state of rehabilitation. Almost all of these inmates return for violations creating a cycle of hopelessness for the inmates, the victims, and those working within the system.

            I later discovered the ACLU filed a suit against the State regarding overcrowding a few weeks before this second parole hearing for Patricia. To address this, the parole board scheduled forty-seven parole hearings for the day.

            Draw your own conclusions.

            More and more over the last several weeks the complexity of my relationship with Patricia came home to me.

            I am more then the victim of her crime; I am the father and guardian of our children --- Her children. I dedicated the majority of my adult life toward the goal of the children enjoying a healthy relationship with their mother. It is my greatest failure.

            This old wish, a healthy mother, continues to creep into my thoughts even after all of Patricia's actions.

            It is an old habit. On a daily basis for almost twenty years, I worked on this wish. I would tell Patricia why she needed to act responsibly for the children's sake. I would explain to the children why they should not be mad at their mother. I even pushed for Patricia and Glen's reunification when everyone, everyone gave up on them Patricia, Glen, the Guardian, the mental health professionals, my parents, the visit supervisors--- everyone.

            Here is a pragmatic reason for the wish. If Patricia threatened my life before she went to prison, how safe am I after two years of incarceration?  Although I am not particularly fond of her second husband, I respect his parents. On the night Patricia met with the hit man she left a card game with the second husband's family. I can see their reaction if Patricia told them what she planned. I imagine they would have tried to stop her and barring that, called the police themselves.

            Jump two years forward and Patricia's new family consists of a "father" found guilty of threatening me; a "sister" imprisoned for child abuse, prostitution, and drug dealing; and a "brother" who killed himself while awaiting trial for the kidnapping and rape of a child under fourteen.

            Hell yes, I wish every possible step taken to improve Patricia's mental health. The alternative is a crazy woman released from prison hating me with a great deal more knowledge and connections to the world of criminal violence.

            My father tries to hold out the hope that Patricia will simply tire of the fight and leave me alone. Perhaps even the fear of prison will keep her at bay. 

            Our knowledge and experience with Patricia whispers that the thought of her walking away is even a greater fantasy then her receiving the help she needs. There is no evidence that Patricia's core personality differs from the personality exhibited over the twenty years I dealt with her and the near forty years her family accounts for.

            Quickly, Patricia holds grudges for years and she never believes that she has done anything wrong. She is smart enough to know that she cannot let others realize this, that she needs to pretend to believe in her faults, but ALL of us know that she does not really think this way.

            Any wonder why I build toward quiet despair. I talked to the children's old Guardian Ad Litem as I tried to decide on actions. He agreed with my assessment that without direct help and supervision, there was a ninety percent chance that Patricia would kill herself within six months of release, and a fifty percent chance that she would attempt to take me and maybe the children with her.

            Again, everyone who knows Patricia is comfortable with this statement to include my family, her family, and me.

            I am not ready for Patricia's death. I realized this during the confusion surrounding her latest attempt. It is not love or concern for her; it is love or concern for the children. The latest attempt made clear that, for the children, the ideal situation is for Patricia to live but stay out of their lives. As long as she lives, there is hope. As long as she stays out of their lives, they do not have to face how dismal that hope is.

            The final joker in the deck occurred when the Department of Corrections informed me the reason and plan for this hearing. The parole board would review information on Patricia's mental and physical health and then establish conditions of release.

            I guess they did not expect me to see the problem with that. Basically the plan meant that the same idiots that created the last failed parole plan, the one that called for her release to the gentleman that had been found guilty of threatening me, would be responsible for creating the next parole plan and WITHOUT THE PAROLE BOARD LOOKING AT IT. Patricia and the other parole plan authors would now have a blank check.

            A reasonable person might ask why I bothered to go. Honestly I struggled with this thought. Finally, on Sunday night I decided that I needed to make a record of my thoughts, to put my concerns and my knowledge about Patricia's problems in the record so that if, on her release, our life went to the hell we all envisioned, we might hold some people accountable.

            Off to Grants I went.