Murray Memories

I was underwater. Everything was murky and brown and it stung my eyes to open them but it terrified me to keep them shut. I was probably about four. Murray would have been about thirteen. Murray jumped into Bean Lake and pulled me out of the water after someone, maybe even Murray, threw a firecracker which exploded right in front of me. It scared me so much I jumped back and fell into the lake and got my sandal stuck in the mud. Murray pulled me out of the water. I was crying. I remember my dad running down the dock toward us, screaming at everyone, "What happened? Where's her sandal!" I remember thinking I was going to get into trouble for losing my sandal, which had stuck so much in the mud at the bottom of the lake that it hadn't come out with me when Murray saved me from drowning.

I remember Murray visiting me the summer I was sent to live with Grandmother Ruthanne. I had been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. I was 11. My mom didn't know what to do. Because of Mom’s history with electroshock therapy, she was leery of psychiatry. So she sent me to live with her mother. I can only assume my mother's thinking was that my living with someone who really was insane would make me feel relatively saner and help me snap out of this not-eating phase. Or it was my mom’s idea of sending me to boot camp. I was miserable living with Grandmother Ruthanne, who was as strict as my mother was lenient. I wasn't used to living under such a microscope. I felt trapped.

Then Murray showed up one afternoon when Grandmother Ruthanne was taking a nap. He took me for a drive in his truck. We drove around the old neighborhood. We stopped and had an ice cream at the Dairy Queen that we lived up one block from when I was born. The one that Mom ate at every day while she was pregnant with me. We had a nice time, sharing memories. He entertained me with his adventurous tales from on the road.

We got back and Grandmother Ruthanne was on the porch with her hand on her hip. She was furious. Of course she was worried about where I was, but she would never say such a thing. Instead, she started screaming at me. Murray immediately jumped in and talked Grandmother Ruthanne down. Saving me from near death again.

I remember Murray bringing his girlfriend Lundi over when I was about nine. He adored her. Lundi was the prettiest girl I had ever seen, and I wanted to look just like her when I grew up. She had long, messy hair, wore a wrap-around batik skirt, and she had hairy legs. She was the first woman I had heard of who didn't shave her legs. She was my new hero. That night they all got drunk and high and Lundi taught me how to French braid using Murray, with his long hair, as the model. We gave him a little braid on his beard to match. I still have a photo we took of Murray looking at his French braid by holding a hand-mirror in front of his face and looking into the bathroom mirror. His beard braid had a little tiny red ribbon I snagged from my Barbies. Lundi left me with a sense that I didn't have to be anyone I didn't want to be and I could still have a boyfriend who adores me.

As a young adult I remember getting a call in the middle of the night to come bail Murray out of jail at like 39th and Troost, and I did it without any hesitation. I owed him a couple of bail outs for the drowning Calvin and screaming Grandmother Ruthanne things. I remember driving Murray places because he'd lost his license from too many DUIs, and I remember Mom and me visiting him at the county jail where he served a short sentence. Yes, let's jail alcoholics and see if that helps them to quit drinking and driving. How about this? How about we take all the money we're spending to incarcerate people who enjoy going out for a drink and spend it on a decent public transit system that runs at all hours all over the city so people could go out, spend a little money, stimulate the economy, and not have to worry about driving home drunk. But I digress...

I remember the long-winded answering machine messages Murray would always leave. He'd fill up an entire tape and never even get around to asking me the thing he called about in the first place. Then I'd erase his message and later get another one from him saying, "So, anyway, I'm writing this story and I can't think of how to spell this word, and so I think, who would know how to spell a weird word, and of course, Syd, my sister the librarian! So, how do you spell queef? Call me back."

I remember sitting on the front porch with him and his fiancée Cheryl after they had moved in together. We were swinging on the porch swing, talking, laughing, enjoying our beers. Random people would walk by and Murray would call out to them all, inviting them up to the porch for a beer. Every person Murray ever met was a friend.

So for the first few months after Murray’s diagnosis, I came over a few times a week to check on him, bring him food, bring him cigarettes and booze, and bring him company. I wasn’t the only one. It seems like every friend and many ex-girlfriends called to tell him how much he meant to them and how much they’d miss him.

I remember that every time Murray would make an appearance at a family gathering, whenever someone would say to him, "It's good to see you," he'd smile wide and say, "It's good to be seen." But now that his fiancée, his first true love, the first woman who loved him in spite of himself, now that she had died, he found no reason to continue living on without her. He wanted to die. He wanted to be with her again in the afterworld. Up until then, I didn’t even know Murray believed in God.