“I never knew when my father was coming home,” Ahmarr Melton told DelawareOnline.com.
For 14 years, Melton watched other boys play with their fathers and experience a unique relationship that he never had. His own father, Coley Harris, had been serving a second-degree murder sentence since Melton was two years old. Melton only visited his father in prison occasionally.
Those visits were never quite enough, and Harris’s absence left a void in Melton’s heart—a void filled with jealousy, disappointment, and shame.
After Harris’s release, he wanted to reconnect with his son, but his efforts to reach out to Melton were met with reluctance and reserve.
“There was a period of time where I didn’t know him as a person,” said Melton. “But we worked at it, and I had more access to him and essentially built a relationship with him.”
Long walks and long conversations led to reconciliation. Still, they knew that other families struggled to reconnect. They realized they needed to share their story.
Together, Harris and Melton wrote “Out of the Ashes,” a one-act, spoken-word performance with a special Q&A at the end. The piece follows their experiences as a father and now-grown son striving to make amends.
Recently available on DVD through the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), the story brought NFI President Christopher Brown to tears. “I’ve had a lot of fatherhood-related documentaries sent to me … But never have I been so moved by a film as I was by this one,” said Brown.
Harris and Melton may be on stage and on film, but their renewed relationship is hardly an act.
At William “Hicks” Anderson Community Center in Wilmington, youth counselor Larry L. Williams was stirred by the authenticity that Harris and Melton brought to the stage. “Seeing a father and son reconnect like they did is really important,” he told DelawareOnline.com. “Some of [the audience members] who have fathers in prison can see how the connection can be made back, and they can have a good relationship with their fathers.”
In the United States, 2.7 million children have at least one parent behind bars. It is believed that about half of the men in state prisons are fathers, and in far too many cases, the footsteps of these fathers are followed by their sons and daughters, creating a cycle of crime stretching across generations.
But the story doesn’t have to end with loneliness and shame. You can help these families reconnect with each other and experience God’s love in a fresh way. What better time to do that than this Christmas? Since 1982, Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program has been reaching out to children of prisoners and their families who desperately need the hope of Christ—the true meaning of Christmas. To register your church or group today, click here.
