Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

intelligence in a body like that is a miracle. She takes exquisite care of herself, and it shows. It inspires me and makes me always try harder to be better for her.
    The thing is, I do things just to dazzle her. She says I know everything, and she is always amazed by the information I can supply on any topic she thinks of. I devour books by the boxful, just to impress her with what I know. I exercise twice a day—push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, running in place, and yoga—just so she’ll be as enamored of my body as I am of hers.
    Lorri and I weren’t able to touch each other at all until December 1999, when we were married. We had the only Buddhist wedding ceremony in the history of the Arkansas prison system. The guards had no idea what to make of it. It was a small ceremony that lasted about forty-five minutes, and we were allowed to have six friends there to witness it. They were friends and supporters of us both. Afterward, people said it was so beautiful they forgot it was taking place in a prison. At one point, I broke out in a cold sweat and nearly fainted, just because that’s every man’s genetic predisposition to weddings. After we were married, Lorri and I were permitted to be in the same room with each other, but every visit we had while I was imprisoned was chaperoned.
    Lorri had moved to Little Rock in August 1997 to start a whole new life and to be near me. She kept and still keeps every aspect of my life—and my ongoing legal case—neatly filed and managed, even when I rebel against it. She now represents me to the world at large. When she attends a meeting on my behalf, everyone has learned that it’s the same as if I were sitting there. She’s the only person I’ve ever trusted to take care of me as if she’s taking care of herself. When things need to be done “out there,” I can rest easy knowing she will tend to it.
    I spend every day of the week looking forward to Friday, when we have our weekly “picnic” in a visitation cell. Everything else is just a countdown to those three hours. We don’t spend all our time waiting on some distant day when I’m out of prison, because we have a life together right here and now. This is our life, and there is not a moment when we’re not in each other’s minds and hearts.
    Her parents are extremely supportive of our relationship and make trips to the prison for occasional visits. They’ve been a hell of a lot more accepting than I would have been if I had a daughter and she announced that she’d married a guy on Death Row. My son loves her as well, and she gets to take on the role of stepmother whenever he comes for a visit. She’s better suited to the role of parent than I, because I’ve still not gotten used to someone addressing me as “Dad.” In the early years, Domini brought Seth to visit me twice—after that, she would send him by plane to meet Lorri, who brought him to visit, though after he was about twelve, he and his mother just stopped visiting. This happens all the time: in the first year or two family will visit weekly or monthly; after that, their lives continue on, and the visits taper off.
    I would go through everything I’ve been through again if I knew that’s what it would take for Lorri to find me. She found me when I was drowning and breathed life into me. I had given up and she gave me hope. For the first time in my life I am whole.
    Any friendship that is worth its weight is like a dark and secret place where you hide bits of yourself. The door can be opened only by the two people who have the key, and you carry it with you wherever you go. Magnify that by a billion, and you begin to get an idea of what marriage is like.
    Lorri and I have struggled, fought, wept, and laughed as we were forced to discover new connections. She’s the only person I’ve ever known who has the tenacity and willpower to keep going when all others would have given up and walked away in defeat. We’ve had to take turns guiding each other through dark places. In the end it has helped us create a stronger bond than those who get to live together under the same roof. We’ve grown together as a single organism.
    Times have been both hard and magickal. I’ll never forget the Christmas we spent brokenheartedly whispering to each other on the phone, listing all the presents we would so dearly have loved to be able to give the other. Sometimes we decide on television programs to watch at the same time, and it’s as if we’re