Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust..."
The Burial of the Dead, fromThe Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot
By Juan Montoya
Eliot may well have substituted the last day of February for April considering the tumultuous events that have surrounded us. It seems almost fitting that it is the beginning of Lent, when Christians go through a period of self-denial in preparation for the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ.We are not known to be overtly religious in this blog, though we respect the faith of those around us.
And we have no inkling of the depth of pain that the death of Port Isabel homeboy Ray Marchan has brought to his family and loved ones. Ray was a superstar who made it out of the shrimp boats and wind-blown sports playing fields of his native Port Isabel.
Before his involvement with the corruption at the Cameron County Courthouse, he was a man people and youngsters looked up to in his hometown. That he took his own life, as appears to have been the case, isn't for us to judge. That will be left up to himself and whoever we come before after this whirligig is done on this mortal plane.
I never knew Ray on a personal basis, though I have friends who did. He will be remembered among them not for the lurid headlines of the Abel Limas corruption case and its aftermath, but for his easy sense of humor, his ready wit, and his keen legal mind.
It is unfortunate that he chose to exit rather than paying his penance to the public though incarceration. But then again, we will never know what he was going through after a life of struggle to climb out of Smalltown USA and establish himself as a legal force to be reckoned with before his fall.
RIP, Ray.
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