I thought my mother-in-law, Gail, would die in prison, denying my kids any real time with their paternal grandmother, and leaving me to have hard conversations with my husband, Russell, about things like the cost of flying a body to Georgia from Florida. Sent away in 2008 at age 65, she’d been sentenced to 20 years and 11 months at a minimum-security federal prison — I figured it may as well have been life.
We’d been responsible for her since Russell’s dad died in 2018, making sure she had commissary money, magazine subscriptions and a way to contact us. In late 2019, Russell worried when he hadn’t heard from her in weeks.
“She has money on her account,” Russell told whoever answered the phone at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex.
The person shrugged audibly, offering no further help besides, “Mail her a letter.” Russell thought maybe his mom was mad at him. Instead, it turned out that she had contracted Legionnaires’ di…
