People die in prison. I don't mean like in the movies that the women of Fluvanna die by violence; but women, sometimes young women, do get sick and die.

Back in 1988, when I was living in the maximum-security unit at Goochland ("Cottage 3"), the 22-year-old across the hall from me died. One minute she was boisterous, the next turning shades of gray. Since we were both about the same age and had long sentences, I felt as though holes had been punched in my belly. The mystery of a presence, of a life, and the nothingness is discomfiting

The rate of dying has increased at FCCW. Not that the women of Fluvanna die faster than they did at VCCW, but the enormous growth in the female inmate population means more women die. In 1987, VCCW was the only women's facility and it held about 300 inmates. In 2005, there are five women's facilities and FCCW alone holds approximately 1,100 women. Not only are there more of us to die, we are older.

When we are young, we lose friends to life, to moves and school transfers. Then we go to different colleges. Get jobs and move to other cities. We lose friends to marriage and family life. We lose friends to changes in status, when they become CEOs and we become inmates, or performance artists, or missionaries in Peru. Then when we hit a certain age, we begin to lose friends to disease. So it is in prison. We lose friends to transfers, to freedom, and to death.

One of the great inmate debates is on dying in prison. On an emotional level, it would seem the most awful fate of all. Then someone pointed out that dying is unpleasant anywhere. Whether it is in the old age home, in the hospital or in prison, most of us will die in some form of institution. A sobering and ugly thought I don't care to dwell on.

A good death is peaceful, sudden, preferably while asleep. The next best is with friends and family around one's bed everyone saying the things that need to be said before it's too late. The worst scenario is a slow lingering agony all alone. I think that's what we imagine dying is like in prison. Painful and lonely.

While I am sure there are cruel lonely deaths in prison (just as there are in hospitals and nursing homes), one of the unexpected truths of this place is that dying reclaims our humanity in the eyes of others. Officers, staff, inmates--everyone in sometimes surprising ways--step up to love and encourage the person who is dying. Repeatedly I have seen officers who only knew an inmate in passing make the emotional space and the physical time to visit with them as they die in the infirmary. These unexpected visitors, these unexpected kindnesses, these unexpected tears resonate with purity.

I was reading a book that ruminated on Greek mythology and its relevance to the human condition. It repeatedly made the statement that the limits imposed by death give human beings meaning. Death gives our lives significance. If we lived forever, like the mindless, bored, silly Greek gods, our lives would be meaningless.

However, it's hard to find anything meaningful in a women less than 30 dying of kidney cancer. It's even harder to find anything meaningful in the death of a child, especially when millions of them die of malnutrition or curable diseases. And I shadow box over the story of a really nice woman who served 15 years and then got hit by a truck six weeks after her release. Or the inmate who after serving 19 years died six months before her release.

In my childish mind, it's only fair that a certain amount of life suffering should have an automatic happy ending. Frequently, however, it doesn't work out like that. (Please do not attempt to placate me with flaccid cliches.) The only redeemable part of dying is how it might inspire the living. Dying is terrible, but it does open opportunities for us bewildered bystanders to live more generously, more passionately, with greater courage. (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, April 7, 2005)

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'