‘She passed away as I held her hand’ Daughter begins new normal after mother’s death
This past spring, Rosemarie Murphy-Gordon felt compelled to share with me a photo very close to her heart. Since then, that photo has been close to my heart, too.
It captures her hand clutching the hand of her mother, Claudia Murphy, who died March 7 at Porter Regional Hospital. She was 84.
“That was my last moment with her,” Gordon told me. “She passed away as I held her hand.”
I had never met her mother.
When I asked Gordon why she graced me with such a beautiful, intimate photo, she replied, “Just because.”
Just because her mother was her hero, her rock, her inspiration. Just because her mother was her guiding light after her father’s death in 2009. Just because her parents were her cheerleaders, always nurturing her to find myself and find her way.
And now both of them were gone.
A few months after sharing that photo with me, Gordon sent me a 3,500-word historical essay about her parents. In a way, it’s a love letter to her parents. And to all of us whose mother or father, or both of them, are gone.
I routinely receive writings from readers, for no other reason than to share it with me. I don’t mind. It’s only fair considering they’ve likely read thousands of words that I’ve written about countless subjects.
Gordon’s writing was different, though. It was more intimate, more revealing, more thorough, as if she was sharing it with a dear friend over several cups of coffee late at night. I tend to write this way, too, at times.
I’ve written about abortion, politics, gay rights, capital punishment, and every controversial issue in the news, you name it. But I’ve received the most reader feedback—and intimate feedback—when I’ve written about my loved ones who’ve died. My dad, my brother, my uncle, my grandparents.
Death is the ultimate common denominator in our lives, despite our beliefs, our politics, our faith. It binds us more than any other subject, even love at times, I believe. So I write about it, in part, to reach out to those people who otherwise couldn’t be reached. My readers often respond in similar fashion, from the heart, about their own loss.
“I did have one last loving visit with my mother,” wrote Gordon, 57, of rural Valparaiso, Ind.
Her mother got very sick two years ago and was never able to live independently again. During the last year of her life, Murphy had pneumonia five times. Her last stint with it put her in the hospital, again, just days after her previous stay.
“That same night she was rushed down to the ICU from her hospital floor because she could no longer breathe,” Gordon wrote. “I rushed to the hospital but she was already intubated and never regained her ability to breathe or consciousness.”
Gordon sat at her mother’s bedside for nine days, praying for a miracle. Or for merely a slightly better health outcome. Neither one came.
“At last, as her power of attorney, I had to make the same decision I had made just eight years prior for my father, who also had lung cancer,” Gordon wrote. “To remove all life support and wait for them to be called home to Jesus.”
Gordon’s father, Gene Murphy, was an educator who lived a rough childhood. He grew up in a tough, low-income Irish neighborhood in Somerville, Mass. At the age of 3, he lost his own father in an accident. His young mother had three young children that she had to raise alone.
“She became an alcoholic and gave birth to two more children after her husband’s passing,” Gordon wrote. “He and his siblings basically raised themselves in their mother’s drunken absence.”
Gordon’s father was an educator who encouraged her to search for answers in books, including the Bible, encyclopedias, and the dictionary. The internet was someone else’s dream back then.
“When I would ask my father how to spell something, he would say, ‘Look it up in the dictionary!’ Gordon wrote. “How do you look up something in the dictionary if you don’t know how to spell it I would ponder? His response, ‘Figure it out, you will need to figure lots of things out in life soon.’ “
He’s been gone nine years now and Gordon is still trying to figure things out. She’s finding more answers in the Bible than in a dictionary or encyclopedia or the internet.
“My mother was the one who would smooth things over,” Gordon wrote. “She was patient and kind and she loved us immensely and we knew it. She told us all the time. Dad loved us, too, but he never learned how to tell us until later in his life.”
Her parents met at a dance hall.
“She was different than the usual gals in his neighborhood,” Gordon wrote. “She didn’t have red hair and freckles as most of the Irish women he knew had. She was fair-skinned with dark brown wavy locks and her brown eyes pierced his soul and intrigued him to no end.”
He was smitten. The hot-headed Irishman and the fiery Sicilian danced that night, and they continued dancing for 50 years. They called each other “The Duke” and “The Duchess,” raising three children and raising a lot of his demons from childhood.
“My mother stayed strong when he was weak,” Gordon wrote. “She was the strongest woman I knew.”
During their 50th year of marriage, Gordon’s mother had to survive the loss of her husband after his long battle with lung cancer. “After a year of travel and grief, she came home and packed his things alone to give away to others. She would start her new normal,” Gordon wrote.
During that time, Gordon’s mother became her best friend, her true confidant, and her deepest inspiration for strength. And now she’s gone.
On the day of her mother’s death, Gordon held her mom’s hand tightly as she took her last breath. Gordon has had to start her own new normal without her.
When I asked Gordon why she graced me with such a beautiful, intimate story, she replied, “Just because... there is a message here for someone.”