When I met Barbara Maxwell, 64, last fall, she was in deep grief over the deaths of two of her sons.
“I’m sure it’ll get better,” she said, “but right now I still feel like it just happened yesterday.”
In February 2022, her son Justin Maxwell, 31, overdosed in an Alabama prison — about 10 months shy of his first parole hearing. Just five months later, her youngest son, Jordan, 29, was shot to death. To this day, no killer has been caught. Barbara now has six grandkids without a father — Justin had two daughters and one son; Jordan had three daughters. Barbara now has one surviving son, Jerome, 39.
Growing up, I considered Justin to be a friend. I still remember his electric smile. We used to call him Kool-Aid, after the always-smiling Kool-Aid Man. He was a charismatic jokester and a promising athlete; he played high school basketball and even garnered recruiting interest from at least one Division I college team. I knew his brother Jordan, too.
I met Barbara last year through our mutual friend, Beth Shelburne, who co-produced the HBO Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Alabama Solution,” and runs a newsletter covering incarceration in Alabama.
Before Justin had gone to prison following a robbery, Barbara only knew her son smoked marijuana. He never had a hard drug problem before prison, she said.
Alabama leads the country in prison overdoses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The most recent reporting shows that prison overdoses across the country have skyrocketed by about 600% over the last couple decades.
When we first spoke, Barbara told me that she shares Justin’s story as much as possible to inspire legislators, prison administrators and other powerful people.
“I want to enlighten somebody that might help stop drugs from going into prisons,” she said.
Barbara said she never got to say goodbye to either son, which deepens her anguish. She had only been grieving Justin for five months when Jordan died. At times, she has worried that because her sons died so close together, she hasn’t reflected equally on each of their lives.
“I get upset because I’m thinking about Justin and then I’m not thinking about Jordan,” she said. “Or I’m thinking about Jordan and I’m not thinking about Justin. But in reality, I’m always thinking about both of them.”
On the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend, Barbara plans to speak to mothers who have lost their children to some form of violence. The following day, on Mother’s Day, her son Jerome plans to take her out for dinner.
Over the course of several phone calls, Barbara and I spoke about her sons and her journey back to herself in the wake of loss. What follows has been edited for length and clarity.
— Wyatt Stayner, deputy editor
The first thing Justin wanted to do when he left prison was to take his son to the basketball court. Little Justin, as we called him, loved basketball. He was always bragging to his dad about how good he was at it because everybody bragged to him about how good his dad was at the game. They were always bragging to each other about who was gonna beat who when Justin got home.
The second thing he wanted to do was take his girls dancing. He probably would have taken them to dance in a park and had a radio.
But of course, he never got to do any of that.
When you end up in prison, you might not make it out. That’s something Justin’s experience taught me.
Dying in prison doesn’t even have to be because of a choice you made. It could just be because of another person in there that ain’t got it all together, and you lose your life. It could be because of an accident. You could get something meant for somebody else.
But one of the worst parts is this: If you don’t make it out, the chances of your family knowing what really happened to you in there are slim to none. We’re just gonna hear what they say.
“Justin didn’t have any belongings,” they told me. I know that wasn’t true. He had pictures. I’m sure he had hats. We sent clothes to him.
They didn’t give me anything from my child. Not even a letter. And I know he had them because we wrote letters to him.
My other son was brutally murdered with a gun and nobody knows why. Nobody knows who did it.
Right before that, Justin overdosed in prison. When I went to identify him, I was so happy he was not skin and bones or looking like somebody I didn’t know — because that’s what drugs do to you. They make you look like something you’re not. Justin didn’t look sick. He looked just like himself.
Who is supposed to be held accountable when somebody dies in a place where they’re supposed to be trying to get their life together? Justin was where he was supposed to be for doing what he had done. But what happened to him should not have happened to him.
I never got to see Justin rejuvenate himself and show that he was a good and decent person. He never got that opportunity.
I don’t want somebody feeling sorry for me, so I don’t go around acting like I’m just as sad as I can be. But I am. I want to be happy, but I can’t find happiness because I miss my kids so much.
A couple of days a week, I just walk around the park and I talk to Jordan. He liked to go to the park. Justin, on the other hand, liked to drive. I’ll never forget the car that boy had. It had a seat, but it didn’t have the back part of the seat. So he was driving the car and just sitting up like he had a back behind him and there was nothing there. But he would give anybody a ride.
Sometimes I just get in the car and I drive, and I talk to Justin.
During these talks with Justin and Jordan, I tell them what I’m doing and that I miss ’em. I tell ’em I wish they were here to see how pretty all of their girls are.
I tell Justin how Little Justin, now 16 years old, is like him, how he’s always been skilled at basketball, but how he’s also become a smarter basketball player. For a while, Little Justin could never remember the plays, but he was good. He could steal the ball, move the ball, bring it down the court. He could do all those things, but he could not remember what all the players on the court were supposed to be doing.
A while back, Little Justin expressed to me that he’d figured it out. He said, “Grandma, I know all the positions. I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.” So that’s a conversation I had with Justin. To let him know, “Hey, he got it. He finally got it.”
I have started going to dancing classes two nights a week. It feels good to be doing something I like again.
Dancing takes my mind away from all the pain I’m feeling. I’m free. It’s not like I gotta get it right. Nobody’s judging me. I feel the music, then I move like I want to. I forget about everything. I’m reminded that I still got life and I can enjoy it.
Before, I was in a dark place for a really, really long time. I hadn’t been doing anything but working, coming home and falling asleep. I would go out with my girlfriend, but it wasn’t like I was gonna go out and have a drink or go dance by myself. I wasn’t in the mood.
But I’m getting back to being me.
My girlfriend and I are taking a cruise to the Bahamas together in June.
I just got my passport for the first time.
I’ve been house hunting. I got a real estate agent and was approved for a $185,000 loan. It’s not a whole lot, but it’s enough for me to find something I can leave to my grandkids. I want to have a place so if anybody has nowhere to stay and they need somewhere to go, we’ll have a home.
That’s what I wanted to do before Justin and Jordan died. I was preparing my credit so I could buy a house.
But I went broke because of their deaths. I had to close out my 401(k) to bury two children five months and five days apart.
I wanted them to have the best caskets, the best — I wanted it the way I wanted it, and leaned on the help of my sister Christalyn Cline to get it right.
But after that, I didn’t have anything. I was like, “What am I gonna do? I can’t rebuild what I had. I’m 60-some years old.”
But God is restoring. You know, Justin and Jordan are not here, but they are here. They are walking me through all of this. I know that, what I’m doing, I’m doing for their kids and they would be really happy and proud of me.
