His younger siblings claimed it was unfair that Murray seemed to get out of any punishment because he could always make me laugh. Evidence came in his required essay with a word count that I assigned for playing ball in the house. Scattered throughout were numbering notes to document the progress of the word count with notice that he had a bonus of five extra. The not-very-repentant essay ended with, “and it’s just possible that your mother may be right.” I did laugh, kept the essay, and recently passed it along to his son – who also got a laugh. My justification to his siblings is that he did the required punishment and did not play ball in the house afterwards.
Today is Murray’s first “year’s mind.” I stumbled across the phrase which the Catholic church often uses to commemorate a person’s death date and pursued its origins which go back to the idea of memory or recollection of a person on their death date. This has been a year of holes like Swiss cheese in the spaces he left in our lives. They’ve popped up unbidden when someone brought his favorite homemade potato salad to church potluck; when the Festival South orchestra played “The Entertainer,” his signature piano piece at a daytime concert; when Dr. Seuss day came last week and I remembered the gazillion times I had read The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins with him thumping off the hats as Bartholomew climbed the stairs. Still, into those holes, his sense of humor pops up and brings a laugh. Even as he began the cancer treatment after his initial diagnosis, he brought a laugh with the comment, “The thing I dread most is losing my hair.” Like his father before him and his son after him, he had not made it through his twenties before going bald.
This favorite picture remains on our refrigerator of a family Christmas gathering with his gift of this book – from his sister as I recall. Remembering the laughs it brought at the time I smile with him again. Looking back on this “year’s mind” can’t miss the Swiss cheese holes nor can it miss the laughter that bubbles up from their midst. Truth is, he left us laughing and crying.