The Theft of Dignity By Rev.

Mark Ehrlichmann
There are times in life when one needs to step back and realize the fragility of this human life we live. Those times help us to reflect on the basic values that are important to us and are to be protected and respected as the standard of necessity for all human beings. Below is a poem I wrote to describe what I thought and felt when I learned of the story of one mans struggle in life. A three-word phrase struck me as being the key expression of all of us when we find ourselves in unknowing and uncontrollable situations. The poem is simply called I Dont Know: I don't know, The anguish of not knowing Is such that simply knowing The "I don't know" Leaves me with a heart That simply wants to die Because no one Bothers to tell me What I need to know To get beyond The "I don't know" And the death it brings, To the life of knowing Which is freedom. Attention, Attention, Do you see me? I am right here, Please, Im right here! Why cant you see me, For who I am? A person just like you With the same need To breathe, drink, and eat. I have a heart that feels, A mind that thinks, I want to know. It is lonely to simply be Alone by myself with no respect Or not being understood. Please, notice me, And yourself, also. Imagine you have been unjustly placed in a prison cell that has become your home for over thirty years. You can prove your innocence, but the judicial process ignores and casually casts your pleas aside. You have friends on the outside who struggle valiantly to give you hope and fight for your cause.

This is a story of one man, who is deaf, wrongly convicted, and out of the deepest anguish a soul can bear, tries to end his life. To end his life because of the darkness that encloses his soul as a result of not knowing; of not understanding what happened that led him to calling a prison cell home for the past 30 plus years. As the poem states and expresses, the desperation of this one man is simply to let people know that information was not fully shared, if at all. No one bothered to confirm through listening to him, to learn from him WHAT he understood and knew. Communication was egregiously conducted to serve only a readers digest purpose to resolve a horrible crime. A crime that this man did not commit and can prove that he was no where near the scene of the crime. But he was not provided the information or the tools through which to responsibly and accurately participate in his defense of the charges against him. Helen Keller says Deafness separates people from people. This is what happened to this man. He was separated from others because no one took the time to know what his needs were fully, to allow him to participate in defending himself. Assumptions were made based on a perceived understanding of certain vocabularies, such as hear accurately. When the word hear is used in discussions on hearing loss, there can never be an overstated emphasis on the distinction between hear and understand. One can hear a noise but not understand what it is until it has more information to help it discern what that noise is. It is a must that communication needs to be clearly understood through a repeating from those involved of the thoughts that are conveyed in that communication. Clearly, this was not the case with this one mans experience in the criminal justice system which strives on clarity of communication in discerning the facts of a complaint. This mans struggle has reached an impasse that now leads to its only recourse and that is a pardon from the governor. It is the most heart-felt plea of this one man to request people to listen to his story and understand the travesty that occurred to him. He desires to teach us all to remember the preciousness of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and to learn all we can from our shared daily experiences and understand the needs and desires of our own personal goals. No one deserves to experience the theft of their dignity through a miscommunication and an I dont know.