now and then

A significant person has come back into our lives, Attorney Shelley Centini. Shelley is a beauty in the criminal justice system, young and tough, but a class act. She was a rookie just starting out, assisting the Public Defender who took our son's case, three years ago. She is now an Esquire with a shingle and an office in a pretty classy old mansion in Wilkes-Barre. Circumstances with another child led us back to her legal advice and expertise. But she also asked about Brandon, and has taken the city police to task regarding our seized property which is still not returned. When I called Shelley to retain her services, she immediately offered to cut her fee in half for our family and help Brandon out in any way she could. He has three years remaining before facing a parole board and it's time to think about the end game.

I suppose seeing Shelley tripped the memory wires and reminded me how much time has passed and life has streaked by us since Brandon's arrest. After Rebecca's graduation we spoke to him over the phone, and he keeps commenting as the days go by one after "pretty much the same" other, how much he feels left in the dust. How old. He's not the same person that walked out of our house at three in the morning flanked by the 'coke's finest. But when the metal doors closed, time stopped in certain ways for him. I'm starting to feel it, too, like leaning my head out of a speeding car when he calls. I can't stop it flying by. I can only describe the view and like a postcard sort of say from the bottom of my heart and soul, "Wish you were here". Wish you were here because you ARE missing it. All of it. Visitations are getting fewer and farther between. We don't have time or money.

I don't know how I'm going to feel when Shelley is successful in restoring our property and we sign it off the evidence roster. It's only evidence of something that will never be again. A strand of life and a thread of the past that snapped like a cable and fell away.