It's funny how the mind erases entire time periods of our lives.  Dates, entire events, people, places and things.  And then, when we least expect it -  a sound, a smell, a simple conversation opens up a floodgate of regressed memories surfacing from somewhere deep within the body, mind and soul.

Sometimes, these memories reach way back into childhood - a most idyllic one it was.  Others, they go back to a time of young adulthood when first discovering the power of a bright mind coupled with youthful beauty.  But hardly ever to the near present.  Almost as if all these memories were recalled from another lifetime.  From somewhere deep within a long forgotten past.  Some of these are the memories which cause the greatest pain.  Those that would often rather be forgotten, since one can't go back in time to right certain wrongs.

And then the red bird sings...and flutters away past me. Momentarily breaking the reflective spell I had fallen under.  Still sitting there...on the concrete bench in the meditation garden.  Trying to make sense of my life.  Memories opening up old wounds.  Those that I no longer try and hide.  A heart teeming with both hatred and shame.  Neither one quite able to take much of a stronghold, but still competing.  Only, I don't quite recall this particular memory being all that real.  Just in my mind's eye, I see it very clearly.  Bach's Prelude providing the somber sound score to the film screening over and over inside my own head.  Maybe it's that I still don't allow myself to fully admit to it.

The first time that I realized that I hated myself for what I had become, was when I found myself standing next to the frozen cadaver whose cardboard casket was being ransacked by a small gang of Haitian men inside the makeshift morgue within the cargo hold area of the Santo Domingo airport in the Dominican Republic. SDQ.  I remember the unusual airport city-code well from my days working for the airlines. Now, forever etched into my memory.  An entirely new image conjured in lieu of the sandy beaches and balmy weather touted in the travel brochures.

Never would I have imagined myself years later trailing a dead body there - hovering over it with a proprietal smugness - while silently praying to God that the men desecrating it wouldn't turn their savage attentions toward me or my friend, the undertaker.  I could do nothing to stop it.  I did nothing to try to. So, I just stood there and watched.  Not feeling either particularly helpless, nor of wanting to.

Sometimes, in life, we wish we could get a do over.  This is one of those times for me. This particular wrongful death case I chased here to the Dominican Republic, would ultimately be one of those defining moments of my legal career before my eventual disbarment.  One having nothing to do with the other.  However, it's how I came to earn the reputation of being a shrewd lawyer, thus earning me a most appropriate moniker. One I would never be able to shake off.

While I was away, my staff took it upon themselves to reprint my legal stationery, business cards, and accolades hanging on the walls with "Ruth B. Costa, Esq. - Attorney and Counselor at Law."

"Who's Ruth B.?" I would ask, days later, walking into the office to the sound of sniggers all around.

"Uh. That's you, Bosslady," said the handsomest and bravest young attorney of the bunch, albeit a bit nervously.

"Ruth B.?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, intrigued.

"Yes, Boss. You're the baddest!" He blushed a bit.

"It means Ruthless Bitch!" Said the New Yorker paralegal, speaking out of turn and straight to the heart of the matter. 
"They says yous one bad bitch, following a dead body to the D.R. Uh-huh.  Not yous ordinaries ambulance chase-ah. Bitch'll chase a hearse to make a doll-ah."

"Ahhh...I see." I said.  "But, please, just call me Ruth." 

I turned and walked away into the privacy of my office to dictate the contractual terms for the wrongful death case I just landed while I was away.

There is a price to pay for everything we do in life... if you can believe that. I don't ever recall seeing things in terms of good or bad - just right and wrong.

Coming to SDQ chasing this lead was more wrong than anything I've ever done in my life.  The price I continue to pay is the guilt that has never left me for doing the wrong thing, while convincing myself of doing what was right.

In life, I have learned, we see only what we want to see.  And we perceive things how we want to perceive them.  Justifying our actions (or inactions, in some instances) by how we mold certain truths inside our own heads.  Do overs are not always possible - no matter how badly we wish for one.  Doing the right thing, the first time, is also not always possible.  Learning from our past mistakes builds character, as long as we don't keep making the same mistakes over and over again.  It's called growing.  And it's a part of life.