Responses Redeem Inmate Story

Ken Bouche has found a bit of earthly comfort, but, on a grander scale, thinks his wife of 43 years has found eternal peace.

I wrote Aug. 3 of Ken’s plea that the California prison system let his son Damon make a visit to Brea to see his dying mother, Denette.

That was a belated, add-on request to an earlier one that Damon be transferred to Chino state prison, near the Bouches’ home, partly to allow for family visits but mainly because the facility has a more extensive drug-treatment program than the one in Salinas Valley, where Damon is serving a three-year sentence for possession.

Home visits aren’t allowed under department protocol, a spokesman told me then. And the transfer request had been denied in a July letter to the Bouche family by the Salinas Valley warden.

Ken wanted Denette to see her son before she died and also believed that 38-year-old Damon needed to see his mother, for personal reasons that would help him down the road. But with his requests nixed and his wife dying before his eyes, Ken came across like a guy staring into the void when I last saw him.

But since then, the clouds have parted enough to let him see ahead instead of looking back.

On Aug. 4, Damon phoned home to speak to his mother. Ken says he thinks it was just one of his son’s occasional calls and not prompted by a nudge from the prison officials I’d talked to for the column.

Denette was nearly comatose, Ken says. “I explained to Damon that if he talked, she could understand but would never be able to respond. And that if he couldn’t do it without crying, it would be better not to talk to her.”

Ken put the phone against Denette’s ear as she lay in a hospital bed in their living room. “I said, ‘It’s Damon.’ She got a big smile, and her lips were moving and kind of a gargling sound was coming out. I knew she understood what he was saying, and he gave her peace.”

They talked a few minutes. “When I hung up the phone, I could see in her eyes she got that closure, so to speak,” Ken says, “and I knew it wasn’t going to be long.”

The next day, in the early evening, Denette, 62, died in the presence of Ken, her sister and a nurse.

Ken didn’t get the personal visit from Damon he’d wanted, but there’s a final twist to the story that gives it an added touch of humanity.

Six days after Denette’s death, a representative from the Salinas Valley prison called Ken. He said that the prison had been “inundated” with phone calls about the family situation and that he hoped something could be done. According to Ken, the prison official said, they “would try to have Damon come visit her while she could still recognize him.”

Ken told the representative that Denette had died. However, the conversation didn’t end there.

Ken says the prison official, without prompting, also told him they’d review Damon’s status at Salinas Valley.

“I won’t say they promised, but it was implied that they’d make every effort to get him down to this drug program [at Chino], and that’s what I want, because that’s what he needs,” Ken says.

You might wonder if Ken is resentful and griping that the prison’s response was too little, too late.

He isn’t.

Yes, it appears that what the bureaucracy said couldn’t be done could be done, after all. I understand why they don’t allow home visits, but I also realize that for a nonviolent felon and a cancer-ridden mother, it need not be out of the question.

As it turns out, it wasn’t. “At the moment, it gave me a good feeling, because they were willing to bend,” Ken says. “Now what I’m praying for is that they do something to help him try and correct his problem.”

Ken wants to thank all the anonymous readers who intervened on his family’s behalf. He credits the prison people for being willing to flex on the home visit and for bringing up the issue of transferring his son. He hopes they’re serious.

If it happens, he says, the burden then shifts to his son. Ken says he’s told his son that he can honor his mother by “getting himself clean.”

That is a hope for another day.

For now, Ken takes solace in believing his son comforted his wife in her final hours.

For the rest of us, I think, it’s encouraging that the bureaucracy, prodded by a compassionate public, acted with humane intentions.

I asked Ken what he told his son after Denette died. “I told him that because of his conversation, it made her passing much easier,” he says.

“I felt he needed to know that.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.