TO-WIT: FILE REVIEW
I don’t know what got into me. Actually it may be more accurate to say I know what got into me, I just don’t know how to get it out of me. You see, it recently dawned on me, although the word “dawn” in this context is oh so poignant, that I’ve just passed my thirty fifth anniversary as a practicing lawyer. And while some may instantly jump to the conclusion that this is yet another piece about getting older, let me just say right here and right now that, okay, it is.
This most recent exercise in mortality awareness all started last week when my secretary walked into my office holding a pink telephone slip. “This person just called,” she said, as if she believed that the immediacy of the message might somehow garner my attention, “and he wants to revise his will.”
I looked at the message but I didn’t recognize the name. “Did I do his will,” I asked, and not recalling for herself, she left to check the file index. Within a few minutes she returned, index card in hand. “Yes,” she said, “you did his will six years ago.”
Only six years ago, and I didn’t recognize the guy’s name. How strange. There was a time when I used to remember all their names, every one - all their names, all their causes, all their worries, I carried all of them around with me like my car keys, and for a variety of reasons they were no less important. But now, with my closed files currently numbering well beyond three thousand and my uncluttered brain cells currently numbering in the units, much has been lost to my recall.
“Did you ever wonder,” I asked her pensively, “if my work for these people ever had any meaningful effect on their lives? I mean, do you think I have really made a difference to anyone?”
“You have an article due, don’t you,” she queried, “and you’re just plum out of ideas, huh?”
Before I could even formulate an appropriate lie with which to respond, she had gone to the closed file cabinets, grabbed a handful of files at random and placed them on my desk. “Go ahead, call them,” she said, “but you’ll have to do it yourself. I still have work to do.” Yeah, she can be acerbic at times, but we’ve been together a very long while and some of me has obviously rubbed off.
“Mrs. Evans,” I said a when a woman answered the phone, “This is _____ ________. Some years ago I handled that case when your little boy was injured. I’m just calling to see how you are.”
“Oh,” the woman said on the other end, “wait a minute, you must want my grandmother. Let me just find her hearing aid and get her up.”
“No, don’t wake her,” I replied, “just tell her I sent my regards,” and I grabbed another file.
“Mr. Koslosky,” I said after identifying myself, “I know we haven’t spoken in fifteen years, but you may remember I did that adoption for you and your wife.”
“Do you represent her,” he queried waveringly, and I grabbed another file.
“Is this Mr. Andrews,” I asked.
“Yes, it is, who’s calling?”
I identified myself and asked him how he’d been doing since I last spoke to him nine years ago.
“I think you must mean my father,” he said, “and I don’t find this amusing. You know he recently passed away.”
“No,” I said, “I’m sorry, I hadn’t heard.”
“Of course you heard, you’re handling the estate, I hired you two months ago.”
For one of the few times in my professional life, I didn’t know what to say. I apologized rather lamely and got off the phone as quickly as I could.
I didn’t make any more calls. Age, divorce, death, three calls and I’d already hit three of life’s apocalypses. I didn’t much care to try for a fourth.
Just then the phone rang and as my secretary was at the moment indisposed, I answered it myself.
“This is ___________,” the caller said, “and my wife and I just had a baby. Can you do a will for us?
“Yes,” I replied, “I can,” and I scheduled an appointment for them for next week.
I won’t make it to four thousand, not a chance, and I really don’t want to. And I haven’t saved the world, not even my small part of it. But if a professional career, like a life, is less destination than journey, mine has been a good ride thus far. Bumps, yeah, but style and grace too, and if I may momentarily shed my completely false sense of modesty, a journey of wit as well. Now if I can only find a few spare brain cells to permanently file that information away, I still have work to do.
© 2006, S. Sponte, Esq.