Will was consumed by the lack of justice he saw around him; had a visceral hatred of the unfairness he encountered personally and observed generally. Acutely aware of mixed messages and inconsistencies, he rarely forget an unfairness. One time, he said, “I was in the commons at Sunrise Courts and I took my shoes off. A staff told me it was against the rules. But the staff could go barefoot! I almost felt like saying, “That’s not right. It should go both ways….”

“A double standard,” I agreed.

“What’s that?”

“‘One rule for you and a different rule for me”, I defined it.

“And that doesn’t make sense. It should go both ways. At Sunrise Courts, they made it a rule that since the clients couldn’t have dogs or cats, neither could the staff that lived there. The staff weren’t too happy about that. And one time, this staffer named Rick was going through a divorce. He came to work with a bad attitude, and broke a window. I was glad that Ray Graham took it out of his paycheck and didn’t expect the clients to pay for it.”

“Did you think they would? Why should the clients have to pay? The staff person broke the window?”

“Because Ray Graham has a lot of double standards.” (once Will learned a phrase, he liked using it, making it his own. He particularly liked this one, since it succinctly defined one of his pet peeves.)

He went on to talk about the typical practice of Ray Graham staffers insisting clients “take responsibility” for their mistakes while taking care to avoid having to do the same for themselves. As was often the case, I sensed he was skirting something, trying to convey something far more important than the rather mundane examples of unfairness he was using to illustrate his points.

“Like the time Don made me sign a paper saying I would take responsibility for damaging the condo wall after I threw Mike’s furniture. When will they take responsibility for what *they* did?”

“Lets talk about that. A lot of times, when you did things like that – threw things or yelled – it seems that you didn’t feel anyone would listen to you.”

“They wouldn’t.” He was adamant. “They never did. They didn’t want to listen. That’s why I wanted to get the police….or maybe Steve Wilkos. I could go on that show and then *he’d* listen to both sides.” (Steve Wilkos is a former police officer who had a television show that usually featured Mr. Wilkos standing up for the powerless, intervening on behalf of the victims).

“You wanted back-up. Someone to help you explain your side of the story.”

The powerlessness of the individual in the face of an impersonal bureaucracy, represented by teachers, by parents, by staffers who defined him as “a handicapped person”, a 3/5ths man – this drove Will to despair and often, to rage. His lack of adeptness in articulating his views meant he’d lose any verbal faceoff; he knew that. It was the curse of Cassandra, to tell the truth and have no one believe you. He fantasized about garnering elusive backup, authority figures who would stand behind his views, buttress his truths with words that couldn’t be dismissed. Behind every tossed piece of furniture, every rage-filled voice mail, there was a raw and bleeding need for justice. It wasn’t about particulars, it was about essentials. The right to self-determination. The right to decide his own life course, the right to the same opportunities and choices that define “freedom”. These were the things he felt deprived of, along with the respect and dignity that come with being a free man. His battle was a familiar one, and though it was lonely, it was also universal.

Ray Graham didn’t see it that way. “Anger management issues”, the staff psychologist (also a board member, in an interesting ethical pretzel) postulated. “Intermittent rage disorder”, the official diagnosis read. That’s a fascinating assessment. Is it a disorder if it’s based on facts? Is it an illness, a neurosis, if one’s anger is righteous? The flame of freedom blazed impossibly high in Will’s soul, always. I have little doubt that I’d have been bent to the ground, facing what he faced. The fact that he never was – not ever – never fails to astonish me, or cause me to pay stark tribute, daily, to what he suffered, and what he won.

You can blow out a candle

But you can’t blow out a fire

Once the flames begin to catch

The wind will blow it higher