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 ...

I have never grieved before. I pray never to grieve again. I have been sad before. Death of friends and family and my dogs who all loved me unconditionally. Maybe the suicide of one of my best friends is as close as I came to grief. Before now. For the past two months, I have grieved the loss of Lorena, the woman I loved and who loved me in a way different than I have ever experienced. I offer this not as an excuse, but as a reason, for my unavailability. I am not good at grief, not just because this is my first confrontation with the powerful forces sadness, lonliness, and hopelessness, but because for me it is an intensely personal experience. For me, it is not one I feel comfortable sharing. With anyone. There is nothing anyone can say or do that will change my reality, a reality without the person I planned the rest of my life around. And, I am right. The few times I have ventured out have been disastrous at worst, and uncomfortable for those around me, at best. ...

I don’t know when the relentless optimism ethic took over the world but it needs to stop. Maybe it first got traction with “How To Win Friends And Influence People” by Dale Carnegie in 1936. Or perhaps it was Norman Vincent Peale in 1952 with “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Today, Instagram and TikTok are filled with self-help gurus promoting the same ideas, “You get what you think about, what you believe in,” hence if you think positive thoughts, positive reality will follow. The underlying premise is we are in control of our destiny and so if good things happen we should pat ourselves on the back because we willed them to happen. Obversely, if bad things happen it is because we weren’t positive, or at least not positive enough. All of which is, demonstrably, bullshit. Most of what happens in our lives has nothing to do with our attitudes or beliefs. The foundations of success and failure, as currently defined, is a combination of innumerable factors, most of which...

I’ve written a lot, perhaps too much, about the grief that has devastated me since the death of my love, Lorena. This will be the last on this topic for a while. But before I finish, I need to answer a question that many of you have asked, “What was so special about her?” She was simple, straightforward, and honest. Her ego was always muted, under control, if it existed at all. She didn’t want to compete with me or anyone else. She enjoyed just sitting together. She didn’t need to be entertained. Her life wasn’t a running travelogue. If we went someplace, fine. If we didn’t, also fine. She thought my habit of bringing coffee to her in bed every morning was the kindest thing ever. She spoke well of others. She was beautiful and liked to be pretty but when I told her I thought she was just as beautiful without makeup, she seemed relieved and stopped wearing it except when we went out. She didn’t discuss politics or religion. She was self-motivated. She got up and went ...

It’s strange to wake up alone. Even stranger to wake up alone in a big house with only my two dogs, Milo and Kira, sleeping soundly on their beds next to mine, the bed I used to share. It’s strange for the dogs, too. I see them wandering around in unused rooms and then looking at me and cocking their heads like the dog on the old RCA Victor albums as if to say, “Why?” I shake my head and reply, “Guys, I got nothing.” They wander away looking for the kitchen. They don’t know much but they know where to find the food. In the evenings, I usually open the doors and windows and listen to music, read, and type gibberish until something spills onto the screen that someone might find useful - maybe not to win at life, but to keep from losing completely. “There are too many lonely people without anything to do with their nights,” I thought, as I mouthed the words. As if I was talking about some faceless soul out there. Then I smiled, knowingly. I was describing myself, a newly ...