Daily involvement in tragedy, for those of us whose calluses fail to protect our hearts fully, teaches that moving on and moving away are not linear. Even the quick-to-decide look back on occasion. Our sense of position---in space, in time, in society---is relative.

Part of moving on is moving away---just not too far. Those of us who deal with other people�s tragedies day in and day out have to move away a bit to be of any help at all. The trick is to move just far enough away to gain perspective and not so far as to be cold or lose sight of what is important. Yes, a homicide case can also be a fascinating puzzle and, yes, sometimes it helps to think of it as �another dead body case� but retaining one�s humanity requires remembering from time to time that something horribly sad has happened to get us here.

Most people look at autopsy photos and move away. I don�t have that option, not if I want to do my job well. Sometimes looking closely at autopsy photos is part of my job. I look at autopsy pictures and move on to maintain who I am. Yet I look back to see what version of events they support, also to maintain who I am. I am not the victim. I am not the killer. I am not the judge. I am the person who, within the bounds of the law, does my best to suggest someone else did it or, baring that possibility, to fit it into context. I am the one who must step back from emotion and think.

(Good prosecutors also step back and think but, for many, it's more important that they step back from ambition than from anger or empathy. One rarely becomes a defense attorney from ambition. The odds of getting elected judge or anything else after being a defense attorney are just not very high. (Although I�m glad to say that I managed to beat those odds by twenty votes this spring.))

At the end of my day, I move both on and away. Bringing much work home with me blurs the border between my job and my children. For the sake of my children, that border needs fences. (I don�t maintain that distance between my job and Mr. Philately. Because we do the same work, we connect through work.) And yet, moving on to the next day means moving back again.

In the day-to-day flotsam and jetsam of life, moving on bears more resemblance to traveling an elliptical pattern around the sun than to getting on a train and heading west, never to return. Moving on and moving back. Moving away and then moving closer and then away again. Preparing macaroni and preparing witnesses. School pictures and autopsy photos and school pictures again.

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