Hauling musical gear on the back
roads of the Connecticut countryside was satisfying. I followed my friend Steve
past some interesting houses in the woods of Killingworth: one giant massive
estate that was under construction was already completely out of place with the
houses around it. Another house was built in a strange dome-shape, eccentric to
the last.
We were done loading the gear for
my friend’s big July 4th party. I invited Steve to join me for some
pizza, but he couldn’t. He had to make a phone call to a friend’s mother. The
friend was in Texas and had committed suicide. It was an online gaming friend;
they had never met in person, but the loss was hard to fathom. The guy was
young and had a lot to live for if he had only been able to see that. Now it
was up to my friend Steve to try to console his friend’s mother. Steve has a
lot of friends and cares deeply about people despite his cynical and jaded
exterior. He’s a person people are drawn to and for good reason, but this also
means he spends a lot of time facing life’s tragedies. He’s seen more than his
fair share.
The day after July 4 my father flew
into town and rented a car at LaGuardia airport. He came to our apartment in
Queens and visited briefly with me and my wife and our two little girls. My Dad
lives in Georgia and doesn’t get to see his granddaughters much.
Then we headed to Poughkeepsie for
a wake.
Mickey Murphy was my father’s best
friend. They had been friends since they were 13-year-old freshman at All Hallows
High School in The Bronx.
Mickey and his wife Denise are my
godparents and were a very good influence. They were adults that spared me the
drama of regular hectoring and criticism required of parents. There are times
in every person’s life when they hate their parents; but I could never think a
bad thought about the Murphys Mickey was always a friendly face, a calm voice
even amid the sturm and drang of adolescence. His wife Denise is the liveliest
and friendliest person of every place she goes.
Mickey had diabetes and had not had
an easy time of it. He had experienced heart surgery, kidney dialysis and a lot
of other non-fun things. He’d be permitted a measure of self-pity about it but
that was unthinkable. He was a constant doer of good and could keep his head up
even through very bad times.
My father and I drove to
Poughkeepsie talking about things to keep our minds off of our destination. We
gabbed about the sorry state of politics, the health and well-being of our own
family, how his granddaughters are growing and his difficult travel schedule.
At the wake the significance of the
loss was evident. Whether people knew Mickey for 15 years or 50, they
considered him their best friend.
I owe Mickey a lot, because he was
always giving my father interesting books to read and helped shape him as a
voracious reader in high school. Not too many 16-year-olds can tackle Jean-Paul
Sartre’s Being and Nothingness but
Mickey Murphy and my Dad did.
My father was asked to say a few
words and he came with prepared remarks prepared. As per usual he made me very
proud to be his son.
Here is what he said:
“I met Mickey in freshman year high school now more than 50
years ago. In the past few days many of our classmates have been exchanging
reminiscences and nearly all of them recall his amazing abilities. One of us
wrote that, given what Mickey could do on the basketball court as well as in
the classroom, he was a kind of superhero to the rest of us. And that was true.
I remember describing Mickey to someone once who said, ‘Really, a guy who can
do everything really well, sounds pretty hateful.’ But in Mickey it wasn’t. He
was a gracious man and there wasn’t an ounce of swagger in him anytime, ever.
In fact, if there was a flaw to point to at all, it was that he seldom paused
long enough to even take in the great thing he had just done before he went on
to the next.
“Mick had a successful career at IBM before illness cut it
short. He had a series of important positions in our Human Resources function
and ended up as Director of HR for the company’s corporate headquarters
division where he had responsibility for the global headquarters site in
Armonk. When I asked him about his executive responsibilities he said, ‘It’s
simple, it’s just the stuff you already know. ’ Mickey had a welcome sign placed
at the desk in the headquarters lobby. So yes, that’s simple and it was
certainly something that Mickey knew
to do, but no one had thought to do that before. He carried a reflexive
graciousness with him throughout his life and applied it everywhere.
“Thirteen years ago Mickey and I visited Ireland. The trip
was a Christmas present from our wives. Neither of us had ever been and it was
a pilgrimage of sorts. We visited our mothers’ birthplaces. Mickey’s mom’s in
Charleville and my mother’s hometown of Roscrea. We also hit all the sites that
would draw any self-respecting brooding romantic Irishman. We went to
Kilmainham prison and saw the yard where the leaders of the 1916 uprising had
been executed. We traced the bullet holes in the walls of the post office on
O’Connell Street in Dublin. I remember joking that if we had to have all of the
darkness of this heritage couldn’t we at least have some of the light? I get
the brooding intensity and sense of injustice unpunished and all that but what
about the mirth and the magic? Isn’t there supposed to be a pot of gold here
someplace, Murphy? So I got him to go to the Art Museum. It’s really convenient
being right here next to the prison. I insisted we go to the Abbey Theater in
Dublin to see a play. True, it was a brooding tragedy about a dying young man,
but it was the theater.
“This struggle between the darkness and the light – not
letting one overtake the other – is something all of us of Irish descent
inherit. We don’t always achieve a manageable balance and it can be a life’s
work. There is one thing this week that gives me comfort. Today Mickey is with
Our Lord of whom Scripture says, “In Him there is no darkness only light.” So
we know that for Mick a perfect balance is now achieved and all the physical
challenges he bore so graciously throughout his life are resolved. Because we
understand the truth of the Resurrection, we know that Mickey is restored to
the fullness of his abilities and all the great gifts God gave him just as he
was when I first met him. This is a promise made to all of us and in the
sadness we feel at having to say goodbye to our great friend, this gives us
legitimate cause to celebrate.”
