“I came alone in this world, I have walked alone in the valley of the shadow of death, and I shall quit alone when the time comes.” (M.K. Gandhi, Mahatma Vol. 7, p. 147)

This quote resonates with me not because I am an anti-social human being but it describes the sense of aloneness I felt about a month after our son’s death, Peter. I felt I was walking in the valley of the shadow of death. I still do, although with time and busyness the feeling of death is forgotten at times.

The feeling came back to me strong, however, recently when I was working on the issue of imprisonment of persons ill with a mental illness. Mental Illness is the only illness or injury that can jail a person. Whoever heard of a person with a heart attack or a stroke being sent to jail rather than the E.R.? My son and his friend have described to me the horror of being placed in a padded solitary confinement cell when they suffered a mental health crisis.

I am having a hard time finding the numbers of persons with a mental health crisis police take to jail. No one wants to say how many we all know quietly that it is happening. Researching this issue I find myself walking alone in the valley of the shadow of death.

A sense of aloneness and death can be positive experience. It keeps one grounded in the passing nature of this life and looking to new life on the other side. For if death is the end than why do we live? Why walk in the valley of the shadow of death unless to get to the light and new life.

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