The Unlikeliest Guardian Angel of Them All.

If you're a criminal defense attorney in Honolulu, you know him. But you'd never expect what he did for me.

Trigger Warning: Discussion of Suicide.

This is my “take me seriously” face.

Recently, after the notoriously happy DJ from Ellen took his own life there has been a lot of discussion about Mental Health and keeping a handle on it during the holidays. No denying a big part of our move to Japan had a lot to do with my managing the collective mental health of the family. But, let’s take a ride with the Ghost of Christmas past and flashback to a time, before I got married: This is a story about when I was at my lowest and how I was saved by the least likely of angels.

Attorneys come in all shapes and sizes and not everyone is everyone’s cup of tea. Law as a profession attracts outsized personalized, self-designated intellectuals who are highly competitive and need constant assurance of their dominance - whether that’s through words of encouragement or Jury Verdicts. In Honolulu there is a certain attorney many people are very hard on. People have always asked why I would associate with him. I’ve avoided the question in various ways, but let me share the real one I’ve hardly told.

One year, and this is before I got married, but after I moved to Waikiki, so I must have been a Public Defender at the time. One year on New Year’s Eve I was at my lowest: I had gone through a break up, which like many men I was excited about in the beginning and until it started to sink in. Events on Christmas Eve drove home that relationship was over. And over that time I had grown distant with many friends. I didn’t know who to call without bothering them and quite frankly when you’re in a mood like that you’re not gonna calling to be a burden  no matter who promised to be available.  I found myself on New Year’s Eve all alone, pretending to be strong.

In retrospect I think suicide is probably overselling it, but I was low, and I was lonely, and I didn’t want to be by myself. And It didn’t help that the world outside my doorstep was having the party of the year. My feeling was only magnified by the contrast with life outside the window. Without dressing up or planning to do anything more than walk around the city and hopefully see fireworks, I went downstairs to the streets and just started walking through the revelry.

I wasn’t walking for long when I saw an attorney I knew from Court. He’d be the first one to tell you he’d be the best defense attorney in town. He had python boots to match the suitcase (in court, not on this night). At least six feet tall with a wry laugh, once he gets started telling jokes and stories there’s no off switch. He was older than me, but he was from a generation of attorneys who played the role. “Character” is too small a word to contain his outsized personality. 

Out of coincidence I found this attorney walking on his own too, in the same neighborhood, on the street where I lived. I forgot which of us asked the other if they ate yet, but I do remember we sat for awhile outside a Waikiki Garlic Shrimp truck. Over two scoops of rice, too few shrimp, and probably some green salad two lonely men shared an evening. He didn’t let me sit alone and he never let the air get empty for self-pity. He filled it with stories of being a great attorney and a horrible drug addict. The Drug Abuse was driven by a horrible childhood trauma done to him as a trusting child, which I didn’t know at the time. Many years later I, like many others, only found out when his lawsuit made the national press and all the pieces put together. Don’t judge a person until you know what they’ve been through - Be happy for whatever you have because someone surely has it much worse.

After the shrimp we sat on the wall behind the police station in Waikiki and silently watched the closing of the year fireworks. After we went our own separate ways. Full. Satisfied. The emptiness I started the night with wasn’t gone, but it was surely less important.

Originally I thought I was doing him a favor. That he was a lonely old man who needed someone to listen to his stories of importance, but I think that might’ve been a little bit of me looking into a mirror without realizing. In retrospect I’m certain something about his years of recovery made him realize I needed someone to sit with me that night. That I shouldn’t be alone. That the best way to be helpful was to be a friend. To be present. Maybe not consciously, but we both realized it, I just didn’t realize it was him doing that for me.

We checked in on each other from time to time but never really hung out again. He’d show me pictures of his new truck and promise to take me for a ride. 

But that New Year’s Eve, my guardian angel was Emmitt Lee Loy.