“Hope Comes Back Around.”: The Casey McWhorter Tapes (2): Scheduled for Execution on November 16, 2023 in Alabama

“Hope Comes Back Around.”: The Casey McWhorter Tapes (2): Scheduled for Execution on November 16, 2023 in Alabama

Hope is an interesting phenomenon.  It grows.  It changes.  Sometimes it’s close.  Sometimes it’s far away.  Regardless, it seems like hope always finds a way to come back around.

Even though my dad was absent throughout my childhood, I was loved by my mother and grandmother.  They picked up the slack.  I didn’t want for too much.  If hope and security are the same thing, I guess you could say that I found it in them.  Now of course, I experienced hope around Christmas just like every other kid…you know, hoping to get what I want.  When I thought about the future, I guess I took great hope from the movies.  I used to watch old westerns all the time.  I wanted to be the gunslinger that beat the bad guys all the time.  I now realize that I became the bad guy instead…at least for a time.

During that time, I hoped for something more than what I had.  I wanted to be accepted by the guys.  I wanted to be a man.  I wanted control over my life.  It was all a figment of my imagination.  It wasn’t real hope.  It was a mirage.  I think a great many people commit crimes with the hope that they might become bigger than they are.  When I committed the crimes I’m in here for, I killed hope for myself and a great many others.

Honestly, I didn’t know what a capital crime was.  I mean I knew it was about the death penalty…but I didn’t know what that meant about when it was going to be carried out.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I just hoped they wouldn’t kill me as quick as I thought they might.

Over the years, a more realistic hope has returned.  When my grandmother got cancer and eventually passed, she helped me understand that I had to get back to God in order to have any hope at all.  Slowly, I think I have.  I guess I just keep casting my hope out there in hopes that I might pull something back.  Most of the time I do…and if I don’t, I just keep casting.

Here at what I believe might be my end, I’m trying to keep hope alive.  No matter what happens, I hope that people will think that my life mattered for something positive.  I hope that God will grant me that.