Insomnia in Two Generations

Insomnia again. About four times in the last two weeks I've been awake at 2:30 AM. Usually the insomnia is associated with severe stress; this episode doesn't seem to have that association.
I get up out of bed so as not to disturb MySpouse. The dogs trek resignedly down the stairs with me. They curl up on the couch and go back to sleep. I think unkind thoughts about creatures who can sleep. I make coffee. Might as well, it'll be hours before I go back to sleep.

This insomnia isn't nearly as bad as what I've experienced in the past. I'm grateful for that. Grateful also to not have the kind of stress that precipitated the past insomniac episodes.

Yesterday I visited with a woman whose son was a friend of my son when the boys were teenagers. She asked after Nick and I answered "He's doing okay for a guy in prison." I can talk about Nick in a quick glossing-over sort of way, but I can't talk at length or in detail about him. It' s too painful. I'm honest about that with people who do want to talk about Nick.

January 1997 is when Nick was arrested. I lived in a stew of anxiety for the six months before he was sentenced in June 1997. More serious than the kind of things teens are inclined to, he was drunk and cranked, he kidnapped and raped a young lady. I do not condone what he did. I do believe he deserved to be punished.

But not so extremely. First-degree murderers get shorter sentences. Nick was sentenced to serve two 25-year sentences consecutively...one after the other; rather than concurrently...both sentences at the same time. He had no prior arrests for violent crime. No record beyond normal teenage speeding tickets.

He has served 10 years of 50. He was 18 when he was arrested. Nick will be 29 years old on April 30, 2007. The friend's mother asked about parole. I told her I don't even think about it.
If I don't hope, I will not be disappointed.

For most inmates in our prisons there's a family, a mother, siblings, cousins on the outside. Inmates without a caring person on the outside do not fare as well as inmates whose families stay involved with them. Prison is a whole different society than what's out here where we live.
Nick was as frightened by jail and prison as anything he'd ever been scared of before. There wasn't much I could do to help except to listen and explain some things to him.

When he was in jail he had a bout of insomnia. The jailers gave him Benadryl to help him sleep. He called me, all suspicious of a drug he'd never heard of before. I told him that the active ingredient in Benadryl would help him to sleep by making him drowsy. Told him he'd had the drug numerous times in the past as a remedy for cold symptoms. Nothing to fear, says Doctor Mom.

I found some humor in it. He was all worried about the Benadryl, common as it is, but not the least concerned about using crank. Go figure.