The Lawyer Who Went to Heaven

Since a couple of years ago when Pastor instructed the Youth at our church to make a short film based on the brothers and sisters at our church, i always had in my mind to do a film based one of the brothers at our church's life and testimony.  Since, now we already did a play, i think i can scrap what i had started to write a year ago...

The Lawyer who Went to Heaven

As he has done so often in his first year with the Law Firm, he’s won another case for another important client. He’s starting to gain notoriety within the legal industry as an incredibly talented man of litigation. He has a way of uncoiling the most complicated of legal matters to work favorably for his clients with absolute ease. Simply put, there are no problems he cannot fix, there are no legal matters that he cannot handle and resolve to the benefit of his ever growing list of satisfied clientele. After he comes home from another victorious day at work, he kisses his wife’s protruding stomach and talks to his unborn child....... Harry has never been more anxious in his life as he sits in the waiting room at the hospital. Palms sweaty, legs shaking, and out of cigarettes, he is sitting at the hospital as if he is sitting in a courtroom being tried for a crime himself. Finally, a nurse steps out and announces the verdict, “it’s a girl!” He immediately breaths a big sigh of relief. He steps in and sees his wife with the little precious baby and thanks the doctors and nurses. For a brief and negligible half of a split second, he thinks of thanking a God he believes doesn’t exist for allowing his baby to be born. He quickly dismisses this thought without much consideration and continues to thank the doctor and nurses. Every immovable objects surrounding the invisible shield protecting the secure life he has created for himself seemed to come alive and share in his delight. From the walls surrounding the hospital room to the sunlight peeking through the blinds, even the clouds in the sky all seem to give off the vibe of a life worth living for, a life that is giving back for the tremendous work he has done, the days he spent without sleeping in Law School, and the countless number of hours spent reading books to better prepare himself for certain cases had begun to pay off. As he stared into the eyes of his new purpose and love in his life, he is in bliss, he has never been more happy in his entire life.


One Saturday night as the happy couple sits in the living room playing with Sylvie, they sense something isn’t right about Sylvie. As Harry gazes into the eyes of his loving daughter, she doesn’t seem to return his look of affection with the same. He ponders momentarily if in fact Sylvie realizes the person holding her up and slobbers her face daily with kisses is the one being she can always count on to love her and protect her. He feels a lack of connection between him and his daughter in a way that he can’t explain definitively. It does not matter to him at the moment, but he notices little subtle differences in her compared to other children at her age. As time passes, Harry and his wife become a bit concerned and visits a doctor and asks him to examine Sylvie. There is a MRI exam done for Sylvie and the doctor reviews the results to his utter dismay. Sylvie is diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, a mental retardation that will restrict her from developing either physically or mentally. The doctor calls Harry and his wife to come in to discuss Sylvie.

It’s the holiday season and in the midst of this very busy time of the year, Harry and his wife has yet to do their holiday shopping out of concern for their daughter. Upon receiving the call from the doctor and unaware of the condition of their daughter, they planned a trip to the local mall to finish up their holiday shopping after the doctor’s appointment, assuming there was nothing wrong with Sylvie. As they pass by the shops on their way to the doctor’s office, they each think of what they would like to purchase for one another. Harry had been planning on a vacation to the Caribbean for some spear fishing and boating. His wife had placed her heart on a set of a beautiful family bracelet that was to be worn by Sylvie, Harry and herself for the Christmas party she had planned. Plans that all seemed so perfect, plans that brought about mental pictures of delight in each of their faces.


As they sat at the doctor’s office, the doctor slowly announced the dreadful news to them. In the same instant the doctor mentioned the words describing the condition of Sylvie’s brain and the subsequent impairments, Harry could not fixate his sight on any of his surroundings. Every side of the walls surrounding him, the desk sitting between him and the doctor, the clock that’s supposed to be mounted on the block of concrete that is holding up the ceiling from toppling down had all somehow manage to become liquid and melt before his eyes. He sat motionless as his wife started questioning the validity of the test results and demanded answers on how this can happen to Sylvie. The world literally fell apart and melted before Harry’s eyes. He no longer was the hot shot lawyer who had everything to live for. He was no longer the man who can protect the secure life he had built for his family from all harm. The shield has been slashed and the resulting gash in the shield started to split open, gradually expanding, and slowly letting in a poisonous gas that he could not stop himself from breathing in. The gas he breathed in, he did not know of any anecdote. There was no known cure for this disease. He left the office that day thinking about death, rather than life. The clouds in the sky, the cars in the street, and all the people he recognized to be an object within this world he could not comprehend. The years he spent in accomplishing his goals were starting to become blurry in his mind, he could not understand why he gave so much of his time to something that could mean so less to him in an instant.


Harry, his wife, and Sylvie drove away from the office, forgetting to stop by the mall as they had planned. As they drove, they passed the beach and Harry’s wife suddenly shouted and pointed towards the pier. She wanted Harry to drive towards the end of the pier and bring an end to the life they no longer could not define. Their life had become meaningless and without a purpose. Harry contemplates this in his mind, but for some reason unknown to him at the time, he is somehow moved by a sensation of some sort to continue living. That there will be an answer to this, he seeks hope.

Harry, through his legal connections and friends within the community of doctors, other lawyers, and the network of other highly educated and talented members of the affluent society, looked for counsel and advise. He reached out to the most prominent doctors in the country, he requested all his associates to help him find someone or something that can restore Sylvie’s mental and physical health to that of a normal child. He meets with brain specialists, out of country experts on Cerebral Palsy and is disappointed as there is nothing the world can offer and provide for Sylvie. Harry is in a state of bewilderment, his life becomes immersed in a cycle of emotional distress that leads him to rely on alcohol to coax his mind to fall asleep at nights. He starts looking into religion. He questions whether his non-belief in the validity of a God, a form unknown to him, and whether an ascendant person or a deity truly does exist that can control the world. His nature had always been to question and form a conclusive perception that conformed to his own philosophical perception of what is acceptable and what is bogus when it came to religions. Through his life experiences and studies, he had come to a conclusion and accepted the fact that religions were bogus and served merely as an outlet for weak minded and moronic self-pitying people to place false hopes on. He did not accept God because there was no God. Now, with the world he had created for himself in complete disarray, he started looking into the slight possibility that there can be a God.