Sean was my best friend.
 
Saying that about a kid on Death Row in Oklahoma makes one sound a little bit desperate, like some loner who had few friends to choose from so, you know, takes what he or she can get.  The truth of it, though, was I have always had good friends around me, friends who knew my secrets and I could confide in.  I didn't need some murderer on Death Row to round out my dance card, so to speak.  I was just a normal girl in college, learning about living on my own and getting a feel for what I might like to do with my life.
 
God, however, had plans for me far beyond my own.  They included the notorious Sean Sellers.
 
I was working for the Oklahoma Daily down in Norman.  My friend and colleague, Ben Fenwick, did a full two-page story he was quite proud of, about the new kid on Death Row, and asked me to read it.  I did, God spoke, and the rest of my life changed right then.  Sounds daft, really, but that's the way it was.  I stepped out in faith and sent a letter out of the blue to a kid on Death Row, hardly younger than myself, just to say hi because, well, God had laid it on my heart.  And Sean wrote back.
 
We spent the next twelve years writing.  I still have every letter he ever sent.  They're quite yellow now, and I still cherish every one of them.  He comes back to life for me every time I read them.  They still make me laugh, and cry.  And sigh.  Because in all that writing, we learned more about one another than most friends learn.  You see, when you have little else besides talking or writing, well, you're either going to have a terrific friendship or you're going to have nothing.  There's not much wiggle room in between.  So we wrote, and we wrote, and we talked, and we shared, and we challenged one another and we forgave.  We wrote about love - not just who we loved (or thought we did at the time), but the things in life we loved.  We wrote about guilt, and sorrow.  We wrote silly stuff, serious stuff.  We fought once or twice through letters, and we affirmed each other most of the rest of the time.  We ended up baring our souls, one written word at a time.
 
Besides the writing there were many opportunities to visit.  Recently I read back through his letters and discovered a phase where I was not visiting so much - he said I hadn't been down in a long time.  I cried then...cried over the lost opportunities to see him, see the gleam in his eyes and the slow smile when he first saw me standing there waiting on him to show up in the visiting pods.  I only have the memories now, and I realized I missed out on something.  Hindsight is 20/20.
 
I loved every long drive to McAlester, usually at 6 in the morning to make sure I was the first one in.  At first it was in the old prison, "F" cellblock, which was old and nasty, but in retrospect, offered opportunities that the future H Unit didn't...like actually getting to talk to one another for half a minute with nothing but bars between us before we had to go into the visiting room, with its plexiglass and yellowed phone receivers.  But even once Sean had been moved to the new "improved" H Unit, with its concrete walls, dreadfully small stools upon which to perch, and the feeling of being entombed, we laughed.
 
We laughed a lot.  Belly laughs.  The sort of milk-coming-out-of-your-nose laughs that really weren't expected on Death Row.  Sean had a lovely sense of humor.  Sometimes we'd end up nearly crying, we'd get to laughing so hard.  Other visitors, generally quite somber themselves, would steal a glance over at us like we'd lost our minds.  It was fabulous.  Time nearly stopped when we visited. 
 
He was quite a thinker...I think if his life had been different, if he'd zigged instead of zagged, I could see him growing up to become a college professor - at a Christian college, probably, though the administration would no doubt have bitten their nails to the quick more than once over some of his ways.  I have several letters from him where he expounded on the oddities of life.  The joys and the quirks.  He might have been a sociologist, even.  People fascinated him.  Life fascinated him, since he had squandered his chances of living a normal one.  But he made the most of it, more so than anyone I've ever met.
 
He was grieved about what he had done.  You who read this and think that's a load of crap, I respect that.  But I know, know, his sorrow was sincere.  Just because he didn't live the rest of his life wearing "sack cloth and ashes" and beating himself over and over didn't diminish his remorse over killing Robert, and his parents.  Interestingly enough, I've learned that if a murderer can forgive himself, then I can probably forgive myself for my sins as well.  The Bible says God does...just who do I think I am, being less willing to forgive than God?
 
When I met Sean, I was a budding journalist.  But after getting to know Sean, about his life, about his demons (literal and figurative), I found myself changing my career direction.  It was subtle at first.  But here I am...20 years after meeting Sean, I am a Licensed Professional Counselor.  I work with the down-and-out.  The abused, and the abusive.  My life with Sean became more complex...I started to see what God has pointed out to us, that the world is hurting, one soul at a time.  And perhaps that's where I could make a difference.  Sean didn't live to see me finish my Master's Degree or any of the other things I've accomplished since I met him.  But I figure he knows, anyway.
 
Most of the world - perhaps to this day - saw Sean as a murderer.  I saw him as my best friend.  And I was proud to be his.
 
He was far from perfect, but he was...my Sean.  And I miss him deeply.  

Kimby