No Longer Suffering

I am relieved that my brother is no longer suffering. Liver failure is not what dreamy alcoholics would like you to think it is, getting smashed one night and dying peacefully in your sleep. It involves swelling and pain and vomiting and a lack of control of your limbs until it finally takes your last breath. Murray didn’t want to stop drinking. I don’t like his decision, and I think it was made during an agonizing time for him while he was in the midst of his grief over his fiancée Cheryl’s death. But I respect his decision to end his life the way he wanted to, drinking 100 proof liquor and smoking unfiltered Camels. And I understand why. The way I get to this place of understanding, and even forgiveness, is by reminding myself of all that Murray went through during his time on earth.

When Murray was old enough to walk, but just barely, his dad came home one night drunk. Murray was toddling down the hall. He got in his dad’s way, so his dad wrapped his hand around the boy’s skull and slammed it into the wall.

Murray once told me his first memory is of clinging on to Mom’s legs as they were taking her off to the hospital to get electroshock treatments.

After our mom divorced their dad, the kids—Walt, Marty, Murray, and Hazel—needed someone to stay with them while Mom went back to work to support her family. Mom felt her only choice was to leave the kids with her mother, Grandmother Ruthanne. Horrible things went on while Grandmother Ruthanne babysat the kids.

I found out about one of the incidents when my mom showed me the letter Murray had written her while he was staying in New York. He described Grandmother Ruthanne’s irrational behavior and torturous punishments. She wrapped rubber bands around Murray’s testes as he screamed for her to stop. She put him in a diaper, put cat poop scooped out of her litter box into the diaper and made him go outside in front of other children. Crazy, awful stuff. And each time she hurt him, she said, “Don’t tell Mommy. We don’t want to upset her and have them take her back to the hospital.”