Slouching into Oblivion

During my first decade living in Mexico while still practicing law in the U.S., I wrote a column entitled “Me and Big Joe” that recounted my adventures with a 350-pound Mexican bodyguard, Big Joe, a lunatic psychopath with a serious grudge to settle. He was big and stupid, but loyal. I have republished a few of those stories here and I do so again today if only because I have spent the last three months writing only about grief, about pain. I am tired and I am sure you are, too. It is time to get back to The Front . . . March 3, 2008. 33,000 feet somewhere between LAX and Houston Intercontinental It ended like it began. Suddenly, no warning. The evil bastards who had told us from Day 1 they had a lock on the case just gave up. After six weeks of hand to hand combat, it ended with a whimper instead of a bang. When I was younger, and a lot stupider, I would demand they stand up and take it like a man, but years have taught me that hits, runs and errors are no different than a ...

I often begin a column or blog not with an idea, but with a title. I don’t know where the titles come from. They just appear on the screen. And I have stared at this title long enough. Wondering what it means. Where it leads. In the end, it is a description we all will share. “Cause of death:” Then they fill in the blank. “Heart attack.” “Cancer.” “Gun shot wound.” And those descriptors tell a part of the story of one’s demise. But not the most important part. What we should search for is the cause of the cause of death. The why. “Why did his heart stop beating?” “Why did she contract cancer?” Heredity? Stress? Obesity? Smoking? Chemical exposure? What was it? We all step on the past over and over again without realizing it and it is in each of our pasts where the cause of the cause of our deaths are found. One of my best friends put a pistol in his mouth fifteen years ago and pointed it towards the heavens. His brains covered the roof of his car. ...

Ironically, it has been those who have grieved that have not given me advice on how to get through it. A lovely and sensitive woman I met through all of this told me about the day her husband left to take their two children to school and then about the phone call she received telling her that all three had died in the same car accident. “I can’t tell what to do or how to do it, Jim,” she said, almost whispering. “I can’t tell you how long you will suffer. What I do know is that you need to put one foot in front of the other. You need to continue living.” One of the most brilliant legal minds in Mexico invited me to his home recently, “Jim, I took my family to dinner one evening and my six year old son died of salmonella poisoning. I know what you are feeling. You are profoundly sad and feel like your life has ended except for the heartbeat. I can’t tell you how to shorten the process of grief because I don’t believe it can be shortened. Just know that life goes on and, like it or ...