Posted by: Ed Chernoff
December 06, 2007
Topic: Brownsville, Part Dos

I read a book about 9 months ago that attempted to explain the key to ultimate happiness. It was titled "Stumbling on Happiness", and it provided interesting insight into a number of things that have shown statistically to provide contentment and happiness. Yesterday, I found it on my bookshelf. It was placed, ironically behind a photo of my mother. She smiled expansively in the photo. I'm not sure when it was taken, but I am sure it was during her sober period - the three years before she died.

Most of her life, she searched vainly for that elusive happiness and stumbled instead into alcohol and prescription drugs. Whatever was missing in her life was polished away. The visions I have of my mother flash back and forth in three-second intervals, every other scene showing her slurring and stumbling against the living room wall, making her way to the bedroom.

Inevitably, the drugs failed my mother, and when she reached the jumping off place, she jumped. On the day she took too many sleeping pills, the guests were just beginning to arrive for my sister's 11^th Birthday party. Because my father was desperately occupied in trying to keep my mother awake, my duty was to herd the guests away from the front door. They didn't believe me when I told them the party was cancelled, until the paramedics rushed in. They watched them pull her out on the gurney, a mask loosely attached to her face. My mom survived my sister's birthday, but my sister was irrevocably broken.

My father left soon after the suicide attempt, starting a new family without the burden of an irrational, dangerous wife and three children trained to enable. I had to hang on for four more years, immersing myself in the deterioration. But when I got the chance, I ran. I was seventeen. I was admitted to the only college to which I applied, and evaporated into a world where the future seemed immeasurably vast and light. I never looked back, and selfishly allowed my brother and sister to try to put the puzzle together. It was sixteen years before I spoke to my mother again. She called from Atlanta, Georgia. She wanted to make amends.

I tell this story, because I want you to know I understand. Last week, one of our clients committed suicide. He was 22. His mom and dad hired us a year ago because he was charged with a drug case out of the 248^th District Court. Bill got him on probation and into a drug treatment facility. He seemed to be doing fine and graduated from treatment, but just recently he picked up another case in Ft. Bend County. We had been expecting a Motion to Adjudicate from the District Court in Harris County and religiously checked for warrants. When it arrived, Bill called and instructed him to come in the next day for surrender. That night he killed himself.

Being Bill, he worried that perhaps he had been too pessimistic with the boy about his chances. I assured him that, as the messenger, he had no guilt in the boy's decision. The stark reality is that this is not our first suicide and there's no reason to believe it will be our last. Nothing that happens in court is inconsequential to our clients. Some see nothing but blackness. Sometimes we can't bring them to the light. There is no lawyer alive with purer intentions than Bill Stradley. You simply can't fix everything.

I often say that if it weren't for drugs, alcohol and love we wouldn't have anything to do at the firm. Perhaps that's being too glib. The legal problems that result from drugs and alcohol cannot compare with the damage addiction causes to families. We can heal the criminal pain, but oft times we can only watch as the addiction takes its worst toll.

No one in the firm expected our 22 year old client to kill himself. His desperation was hidden from us and his family. If we had known, I'm not sure what we could have done to prevent it, but you can't help but second guess yourself in these circumstances. As a child, I didn't know what was so wrong in my mom's life that she felt it important to take her own life. Today, as I look at her photo, I can still only surmise. The thing I know for sure is that even sober and despite the radiant smile, I can see the pain in her eyes. It is to my everlasting shame that I didn't do enough to help her when I had the chance.

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