Prompt 253. The Vigil
& a prompt on care and community by Fernando Murillo
Hi, friend! Greetings from the hospital bubble!
I’ve been here since Tuesday evening, being treated for a minor complication of my transplant, and now that they’ve got my pain under control, I’m mostly suffering from whiplash. When I woke up Tuesday morning, I felt good—so good that when I went to Sloan Kettering to meet with Dr. G., my transplant doctor, I was almost bragging about how well I was doing. But later that day, I started feeling a familiar discomfort in my abdomen, and within a few hours, I was on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor, so sick and in so much pain that I finally relented and went to urgent care, even though I knew it would probably mean a days-long hospital stay.
I never look forward to being admitted to the hospital, but once I’m here, it feels like a bizarre kind of homecoming. My nurse on my first day back was Bridget, who took care of me a decade ago when I had my first bone marrow transplant. She greeted me with a big hug and said, so sweetly, “That’s my girl.” The next morning, she surprised me with the biggest whipped cream-topped mocha latte I’ve ever seen—she’d gotten it for me from the Starbucks cart downstairs. (As anyone who works or has spent long stretches here would agree, the cafeteria coffee is undrinkable.) The next morning, my nurse Mary did the same. When she saw the huge smile on my face, she said, “I bet that’s the best way I could have cared for you today.”
What came to mind both times were root-beer floats served at the prison hospice at California Medical Facility, which I wrote about in 2018 in my New York Times Magazine article “The Vigil: The Prisoners Who Care for the Dying and Get Another Chance at Life.” Such gestures can seem utterly frivolous when the stakes are life and death, but they actually mean so much. A place that from the outside seems grim can have the warmth and glow of family, if people make the effort.
That story has been on my mind a lot this week after listening to an interview with my friend Fernando Murillo on the podcast All the Wiser. Fernando, who was incarcerated at age 16 and given a life sentence under California’s draconian three strikes law, was pardoned by Governor Gavin Newsom in November of 2020 after serving 24 years in prison. I was awed and humbled when prison administrators told me the story played a part in his release.
I had the honor of speaking to Fernando the day after he got out, and he was thrilled about gaining his freedom, reuniting with his family, and moving through the world again. But he was also worried about the patients he left behind. I don’t know exactly how he felt, but I’m familiar with the double-edged sword of being the one who gets to continue on when others can’t. With it comes a sense of responsibility that can be a burden for some; the weight of it can cause you to collapse in on yourself. But Fernando has channeled that sense of duty so beautifully. Since his release, he has continued to advocate for people impacted by the prison system, including expanding access to compassionate end-of-life care in the correctional setting by partnering with the Humane Prison Hospice Project.
Listening to Fernando’s interview took me back to the two weeks I spent reporting the story at the California Medical Facility, to the TV room where I conducted my interviews. It was my first big reporting assignment, and I was really young in retrospect and so worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously that I borrowed a white Oxford button-down from my mom so I could look the part of a “real journalist.” But sitting down with my first interviewee, immediately I realized I needed to check my imposter syndrome and my ego. Most of these men hadn’t had the chance to tell their stories on their terms, in their own words. I needed to be there and listen, so that’s what I did. I spent a whole day interviewing every one of the men lined up outside the door—as long as they were comfortable speaking to me.
The stories they shared with me were powerful, and not one of them got through without crying. I spoke with Fernando about this—about these men who fronted with tough attitudes and tattoos opening up in that way, and he said that it wasn’t common. Vulnerability among men is considered weak in general, but that’s especially true in a correctional setting. Showing vulnerability is not just socially unacceptable; it could put you in danger.
This willingness to be vulnerable impacted me. It intensified my sense of responsibility to tell the story the way it deserved to be told. It wasn’t always clear to me that I would be able to pull it off. Through nine different drafts, I wrestled with and confronted my limitations as a journalist, and the story came very close to getting killed by the magazine.
When they finally ran it, it had been nearly a year and a half since I’d written the first draft. As a writer, when you’re wrestling with a story in this way, you can start to wonder, What’s the point? And I’ve had many other stories that, for one reason or another, have never left the purgatory of my laptop. But this one is a forever reminder of what we talk about at the Isolation Journals: that when we share in an unvarnished way—like Fernando and his fellow prisoners—it can ripple out in ways you never imagine. It can reach people like the Governor of California, or the legendary musician Bonnie Raitt, who wrote to me when her most recent album was coming out and said that the last track, “Down the Hall,” was inspired by the men in the story.
Today, to honor these men and my extraordinary friend, Fernando—who each day continues to grow into a more loving and compassionate son, brother, father, friend, and advocate, who inspires more than any other person I’ve ever known—I’m resharing the gorgeous essay and prompt that he wrote for us only weeks after being released from prison. It’s about isolation and hope and imagination and community. I hope it inspires you to reach out to someone—to support or listen or do something utterly frivolous yet totally necessary, like bringing them an iced latte or a root-beer float.
Sending love,
Suleika
Some Items of Note—
Quick reminder: Our next meeting of the Hatch, our virtual creative hour for paid subscribers, is happening next Sunday, July 30, from 1-2 pm ET. Health permitting, I’ll be hosting this time along with a special guest—hope to see you there!
Root beer floats and iced coffee has me thinking of small joys and how we share ours each Friday in our chorus of collective gratitude. If you missed it, you can find it here!
Prompt 253. The Human Mycelium by Fernando Murillo
On November 10, 2020, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and my hero, granted me clemency. Ten days later, I walked out of prison as a forty-one-year-old man, after entering on a life sentence as a sixteen-year-old child. In those twenty-four years of incarceration, I really didn’t get to see trees up close.
Since my release, I have been enjoying hikes, enjoying my time with trees. California has some big, beautiful ones—redwoods, eucalyptus, oak, just to name a few. I tend to stare at them. I am amazed by all the life these beautiful trees support, for bugs, birds, rodents, as well as people, humanity. But what I am truly amazed by is what we cannot see: the mycelium, that underground fungal network that sustains and enhances life. Trees do not live and function on their own. They thrive and flourish through that unseen network beneath our feet.
Around the same time I started staring at trees, I learned about the Isolation Journals—my friend Suleika shared it with me after I got out. It has been a gift to read the stories people have shared about Covid, about cancer, about isolating as a means to survive. I read the prompt “Inside Seeing,” by Lou Sullivan and his mom Alexa; I thought about how, when I was locked in the concrete bunkers of Pelican Bay, I closed my eyes, and I reconnected with memories of friends and family. In my mind, I reconnected with humanity to keep myself alive.
We are so much more than one individual, functioning person. We are mycelium, a network that creates and sustains life and growth. The Isolation Journals is an example of this human mycelium. Even while socially distancing, we are finding creative ways to support one another, listen to one another, heal one another. We are not alone; no, we are very much connected.
Nature is so beautiful. I think of Tilden Park in Berkeley and all of its beautiful trees, the way they sound when the wind blows through them. I think about the many people who read of Lou and his mom, who wanted to hold them, fight for them, support them. Our natural human disposition is to be social. We need each other. These beautiful trees that I have had the privilege of seeing, touching, smelling, listening to—they’re teaching me an invaluable lesson.
Now that I am a free man, I have been paying so much attention to our mother (Earth); she has so much to teach me about my place here, and how I can make a difference. I hope with these shared experiences, we can continue to be that human mycelium, gravitating toward growth, hope, meaningful relationships, and life.
Your prompt for the week:
How can your presence enhance the growth of your community?
If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.
Today’s Contributor—
Fernando Murillo is a San Francisco resident who is passionate about providing compassionate end-of-life palliative care. During five years working in palliative care at California Medical Facility, he received several trainings and certifications from UC-Davis and the University of Southern California to provide end-of-life care for geriatric patients in a correctional setting. Fernando now works for Amend at UC-San Francisco, a public health program whose goal is to reduce the debilitating health effects of the prison system on incarcerated people and correctional staff. He has also partnered with Humane Hospice to develop end-of-life palliative care training for incarcerated residents as well as hospice care in the correctional setting.
For more paid subscriber benefits see—
Show Up & the Muse Will Too, where I wrote about an unexpected hospitalization and what it taught me about swimming in the ocean of not-knowing
On Matters of Life and Death, an interview with the brilliant poet laureate Marie Howe, where we talked about losing the people we can’t live without and the radical power of remembering
Heartbroken Friend, an installment of my advice column Dear Susu, where I respond to a reader who survived cancer, then lost a close friend, and doesn’t know how to move on
Good morning! Dear Susu Joon, you write from your soul and the generosity is wild and true. So grateful for you. I stumbled towards the coffee pot this morning and opened my notes function on my phone. Here’s a pre-dawn poem and a root beer float:
The Choreography of Birds
Dance said the Raven to the poet
She spun in the labyrinth of breath
Circulating oxygen in her cells
The trees fed her
And she them
Symbiosis noted
In notebooks
Of science
And the sun shone on her
The clouds played Mozart
And the harpsichord of her heart
Strummed
Sing said the Raven to the poet
And she transformed sound into melody
Footfalls into rhythm
Barefoot on dark soil
She spun in circles
The moon overhead
winked at her
as if to say
Look up in wonder
at the northern lights
painting blues and sage greens
like Georgia
And Frida
weaving color into movement
Sit said the Raven to the Poet
And the poet
sat in stillness
Neither waiting for a lover
Not working for a wage
Neither longing
for anything
but ease
Sending love and healing drools from Sawyer! 💖🐾💫
I love the idea of ‘Human Mycelium.’ I try to bring a healing presence to those I care for in the hospital: the patients, their families, my colleagues. On a good day, I succeed. On others, not as much. But it’s about remembering that we are all connected. And about knowing that acts like you describe (a hug, a remembrance of previous interactions, a coffee) make an impact and are an important part of caring. Wishing you healing.