And the Award for Best Lawyering Goes To…

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

I meet a lot of lawyers, of course. In the criminal defense business, some of those lawyers are family lawyers.

A family lawyer I met the other day committed, right in front of me, what I would consider a crime. A murder, really.

I met her at the movies. Or rather, in the movies. In one of them. Last night was the ninetieth edition of the Academy Awards. One of the nominated films, for best documentary short subject, was “Edith + Eddie.” I urge you to see it, here, and soon, because you never know how long it will be there.

Edith and Eddie met and married in the ordinary way of lovers. What was not ordinary is that they married at ninety-five and ninety-six. They expected the marriage to last about as long as the honeymoon. Eddie called it “love at first sight.” A sight for four very sore eyes.

The marriage was blessed by one of Edith’s daughters. But it was damned by a second daughter who wanted to sell Edith’s house, where the newlyweds dwelled. That daughter claimed Edith incompetent to live with Eddie because she suffered what was diagnosed as mild dementia. Edith does not appear demented in the film. She appears to be a woman very much in love with a man who is very much in love with her. Romeo and Juliet but…older.

Because the daughters couldn’t agree what was best for Edith, a helpful judge appointed the Virginia lawyer I mentioned as Edith’s guardian. The filmmakers say the guardian lawyer, without the inconvenience of having to meet Edith, decided it best to move her to live with the second daughter in Florida (where Edith says she’s been physically abused) and sell her house, out of the proceeds of which the fine lawyer will be paid. Eddie didn’t seem to factor into things.

The lawyer does what some lawyers do best: she lies to her client. She tells Edith, to convince her she needs to leave Eddie, that “it’s a little vacation time while we figure out how to get you a little more appropriate care.” Edith doesn’t buy it, but the police are on standby to help sell the proposition.

The lawyer also lies to Eddie, telling him Edith will come back in two weeks. “And you can call her every single day on the phone and talk to her,” the lawyer lies as smooth as you please. I suppose that is not technically a lie. Eddie does call her every single day for two weeks. They just don’t let him actually talk with Edith.

Eddie, alone now, sits in a chair, looking at a picture of the bride he can no longer see, or even talk with. Every day for the two weeks he’s been told she’ll be gone.

On the day of her promised return, he waits. Through the morning, through the afternoon, into the night, when he finally understands in his mind that she will never be returned to him. He understands it in his mind, and then understands it in his body, collapses in his grief into a coma, and dies.

I reached out to this lawyer, whose middle name is Joy, to see if perhaps she wanted to tell her own, unedited version of what she’d done. To counter the reactions of folk who call her an inconsiderate savage, who pray for her to be struck down like Eddie. She didn’t reach back.

To be honest, I’m a little bit glad I didn’t have to talk with that lawyer.

That lawyer who, right in front of me, stuck a knife in an old man’s heart.