Bill Walton - Back from the Dead

Artwork 2015 Mike DuBois

Summer 2009, San Diego

I cant do this anymore. Its just too hard. It hurts too much. Why should I continue? Whats the point in going on? I have been down so long now, I have no idea which way anywhere is anymore. Theres no reason to believe that tomorrow is going to be any better.

If I had a gun, I would use it.

The light has gone out of my life, and theres no sound, either. Not even in my spirit and soul, where at least there has always been music.

I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move, unable to get up. Ive cut myself off from Jerry, Bob, Neil, and the rest, just as Ive disconnected from most everybody and everything else. The only people I see, talk to, or hear from are the few who refuse to leave me alonemy wife, Lori; my brother Bruce; our four sons; the most obstinate of my closest friends, like Andy Hill, Jim Gray, my guys in the Grateful Deadand the one person I refuse to leave alone, John Wooden, now almost one hundred years old. Everybody else has been turned away. My mom doesnt even know about any of this. She only gets the good news.

Lori always says my mind is like a slot machine: you never know how the spinning wheels are going to align.

The wheel is turning and you cant slow down,

You cant let go, and you cant hold on,

You cant go back, and you cant stand still,

If the thunder dont get you, then the lightning will.

Ive lived with pain for most of my life, but pain has never been my entire life. Its in my spine now, and radiating everywhere from it. It has taken me down like never before. And it just wont let me be.

What to some is pain, to me is really just fatigue. I love and live for that fatigue and the soreness that comes with it, when youve pushed yourself relentlessly up and over another long, hard climbthe longer and harder the betterand met the toughest challenges imaginable, fighting against gravity and exhaustion, even when one more push seems impossible, until you reach the top, and the destination of euphoria, and you throw your arms over your head in a wild explosion of ecstasy and celebrationa high-altitude climax that youre sure will last forever. There is nothing like it.

But this time is differentreal different.

I was inspired early on by George Bernard Shaw, who challenged us all, as we approach the scrap heap of life, to become a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Thats the way it has always gone for me, as a young boy growing up in San Diego, chasing my basketball dreams at UCLA, then Portland, with my hometown Clippers, and finally in Boston. It was more of the same later on, out on the broadcasting and business road for more than twenty years. Its why Ive gone to more than 859 Grateful Dead shows. Its really all been one show that never ends. Its also why, when Im not at a Dead show, or not involved with basketball or business, I am at my happiest and best when riding high, up on my bike, dripping and soaking with sweat under the hot, burning sun, turning the crank and pushing the wheel endlessly over, time after time after time. Mile after countless mile across the warm, dry desert, along the twisting, jagged coast, or winding up a mountain, spinning, twirling, rolling, drifting, dreaming, celebratingthe chance of being on yet another long, hard climb, the longer and harder the better.

I cant count the number of these long, hard climbs Ive made over the years. But I do know that while the longest and hardest have taken me the highest, I never was able to get that euphoria to last very long. Every time, way too soon after Id reached the topso tantalizingly close to perfectionthe dancing, dreaming, and celebrating that I was sure would never end would come to a crashing halt. Somehow, some way, my wheels would stop turning; Id lose control and wind up skidding or skulking off the road, collapsing into a crumpled, helpless, hopeless heapwhere everything would end up broken.

But with every inevitable catastrophic collapse, at least I always had the musicthe one thing that never stopped. The songs, the stories, the dreams, the hope, would always get me through.

I realized at a very early age that all the songs of my heroes were really just songs of my own. And that they were written for me, to me, about me, and about everything that happened in my life. Somehow, some way, they all knew. About everything. The Dead, Dylan, Neil, the JohnsLennon and FogertyCrosby, Stills & Nash, the Stones, Carlos, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Jimmy Cliff, Jackson Browne, and ultimately the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen.

It fell apart, and it breaks my heart to think about how close we came.

So close, so many times. It all could have been so perfect but for the fiery crash that would ruin everything, every time. UCLA and the 88-game winning streak that should have been a perfect 105what could and should have been, ultimately ending in disappointment, shame, and embarrassment. The Trail Blazers, Clippers, Celticsmore of the same. It all could have been so right; it all should have been so perfect.

When life looks like Easy Street, there is danger at your door.

Its never a good idea, Coach Wooden preached, to measure yourself by what you have done rather than by what you could or should have been able to do.

But at least my crashespainful, miserable, and frequent as they werealways eventually led to new beginnings and the next long, hard climb. And on each new climb, I had to try to remember to learn perspective, relativity, patience, and tolerance, and remind myself of the fragility of it all. Youd think I would know by now. But the pattern kept repeating. Each new challenge filled me with new confidence that this time would be different. And that the joys of this long, hard climb would finally last forever.

Coach Wooden was presciently brilliant on so many fronts. Sadly it took me too long to realize it. When I played for him, I was a teenagerseventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. Most of what he said in those days seemed ridiculous. He would constantly remind me then, and continue to tell me over the next four decades, Walton, you are the slowest learner I have ever had!