Around this time, like every other year, Father’s Day celebrations will remind us about the importance and challenges of fatherhood. Families will get together, prepare meals, and distribute gifts to fathers or father figures; for their leadership, guidance, and protection; stressing the important role of fathers in nurturing their children.
Not for me.
My Father’s Day celebration will be just another day. Just like the past twenty-five have been. Far away from a rainbow-and-flower pot type of festivities; far away from a place where your children give you gifts and tell you how much they love you.
A Father’s day in the slammer is disheartening. The fifteen-minute phone calls hardly do justice. The letters you can mail out are few. The prison visits, unkindly, painful. Year after year after year sadness has been my “amigo numero uno.” Frustration and anger are not far behind. I’ve unseen my sons grow into young men, wishing I could’ve been there for them, to comfort them, to love them, to teach them about the rules of life.
Being a father from behind the fence is impossible – unattainable. I’ll never be the father I wanna be. The slammer robbed me of such dreams. Its powerful tentacles ensnared me as tightly as they could until my emotions felt numb, until the longing for my children became unfelt.
Decades have transpired. The 40-year sentence still stands. The barely legible pencil-written words, “They left me among the dead and I leave a corpse in the grave, I am forgotten, I am in a trap with no way of escape.” The recurring words of my three-year-old son, “Dada, Dada,” pleading and crying, “Come home, come home,” mercilessly stab my heart and soul each passing Father’s Day.
I wish I knew my sons. I wish they would know their father. Nick was barely five years old, Keanu three, and Austin still in his mother’s womb, when I was thrown in the slammer, shoved into the abyss of shunned and lost souls – never to return.
This year, Father’s Day in the slammer will just be another day, with the same reminding quote: “This is no place for the living. This is a place for the dying.”
About Edwin Rubis
Edwin Rubis, father of three, has served more than two decades in federal prison – the halfway point of his 40-year sentence for a non-violent marijuana conspiracy offense. Rubis and his family are working with The Weldon Project and other organizations like Freedom Grow in hopes of bringing attention and clemency to his case.
Edwin Rubis is serving a de facto life sentence in federal prison for conspiracy to possess and distribute marijuana. Convicted in 1998, Edwin has watched from behind bars as states have continued to legalize cannabis for therapeutic and recreational use, while dispensary owners make billions of dollars.
You can find out more about Edwin Rubis and how you can help here.
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