What a waste...

I work for a small law firm (not in my town of 80, in a larger town 10 miles away). When I started here 11 years ago, there were 3 attorneys/partners in our office, I was an assistant to one partner who was a mid 40's successful attorney. He had everything going for him, he was very intelligent, had a law degree and an MBA, a beautiful wife, a great son, a nice home. As time went on, we all noticed that things were starting to fall apart for him. He was missing deadlines, calling in sick, completely ignoring clients, it wasn't pretty. Around this same time he also started an affair with one of his clients, a big no no to say the least. It was his choice to leave his wife and pursue a relationship with this woman. This is where things really started to turn for the worst, his practice of law was severely compromised. The law firm had no choice but to ask him to leave. The reputation of the firm simply couldn't withstand all the bad things he was inflicting on himself.

At first he seemed to hold it together, he practiced in another town, moved in with his girlfriend, he seemed okay. About a year or so after he left the firm things got really bad, he got disbarred for life for a very serious offense I won't go into. He split with his girlfriend, and moved in with his father. His relationship with his son was severely strained from the affair. If finally came to light that he was an alcoholic and it was having a huge impact on his life. He kept losing jobs due to his drinking, one job was as a home door to door delivery of frozen foods, he lost this job when it was apparent he was drinking while driving the company truck for deliveries.....things kept spiraling from there. His drinking got worse, over the past year or so he was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning several times, was in and out of numerous treatment facilities, his family was told on 3 occasions that death was imminent, but somehow he kept pulling through, taking another shot at treatment and another attempt at straightening his life out. The senior partner at my office had lunch with him last week, while his health wasn't great, as he was in need of a liver transplant, and as most of you know they don't give livers to alcoholics, but he seemed to be doing okay. Well the battle apparently proved to be too much for him, yesterday after another lapse he died at the age of 55. So terribly sad, so terribly wasteful, while we all saw it coming, it's still devastating news to us all. We all feel like maybe there was more we could have done, but in reality he was the only one who could have saved himself.

If you're the praying type, please say a prayer for his family.