Death Watch Journal for Kevin Varga – DAY 18

I went out to the visit room yesterday and visited with a lady who has been visiting me for almost eight years now, she is always a pleasure to visit with. While I was out there, I saw an adorable little girl; she couldn’t have been more than three years old. Seeing this little girl prompted me to thinking of my own sons and that when they were about this same age they’d visit me on the South Dakota Penitentiary, I remember them coming each week, their little faces beaming at seeing daddy. Now I am waiting for them to visit me on my birthday next week. I have seen them twice in the near decade that I have been here. My last visit with them was this past summer. They are eighteen and twenty at this time. My grown sons are still precious to me, when I look at them I still see those chubby little boys who would run into my arms at the prison in SD. Here in Texas’ death row we are not allowed to have contact visits, EVER! Not even when they are going to murder you are you allowed to even hug your mother or children on your last day, but I digress. When I used to visit with my children those years ago it was a happy time for me even though I was incarcerated. Now when they come to visit it is a more somber affair. My oldest is very angry with me for never being the father he needed me to be. When I looked into his eyes and saw that pain that I had placed there I was crushed that I could cause pain to someone that I love, and even his pain is a pale thing when compared to that of my mother’s. I have seen her hazel eyes cloud with the pain of my sentence and the tears streak down her face. My heart breaks with the knowledge that I am the cause of her pain. If I could take her pain upon myself to save her from it, I would in a heart beat. It should go without saying that I would, if possible, take the pain off my sons as well. I can do nothing for my older son’s anger. I have tried to tell him that he needs to confront this anger before I am killed because once they kill me he will not be able to.

I too had many anger issues with my own father, which I never was able to resolve and now he is dead and my anger persists to this day. I hope that when (if) they come to visit for my birthday next week that he and I will be able to work through it. I love my sons and hope that before I doe we resolve all these issues between us.