They decided not to do a memorial service for Jean Murphy. She’d probably have been okay with that.
It was her misfortune to go at the height of the virus panic, last spring, when so many of the jittery powers-that-be were looking especially askance at anyone gathering to celebrate weddings, or honor the dead. People who’d known Mrs. Murphy decided they’d just do something later, in the fall, once the danger had passed. But fall was a long time coming, the danger a long time going, and in the end, her family just decided to let it go.
As they had let so many things go.
We met Mrs. Murphy through our church, which she had attended long before we had. We were on the team that visits shut-ins, as they call those too old or too ill to come down the actual building for services anymore. My wife and I looked in on her one Sunday afternoon last year, and for all of the years between us, and her faltering grasp of time and place, we hit it off.
Like my wife, Mrs. Murphy was a schoolteacher. Her still-warm memories included so many young faces whose names had long since disappeared in the growing mist. Even for really dedicated teachers, the eight-hours-or-so days – leading second-grade lessons, grading second-grade homework – are usually enough. But Mrs. Murphy made time for the church kids, too … listening, encouraging, as they stammered out their Bible verses in AWANA.
One of her favorite things, during these last years in the nursing homes, was receiving handmade cards from the little ones at church … running her fingers over the folds of the crayon-coated construction paper, listening as someone read the words swimming before her teary eyes.
They kept moving her from one facility to another, trying to find a good fit. Every few months, a new house, a new room, a new window pouring sunlight on a new, narrow bed. She hoped for places that offered bingo games. She asked visitors, once they’d found her again, to smuggle her in some lip gloss, though she always had a few little tubes rolling around on her bedside table.
She liked for us to bring the implements of the Lord’s supper for her to share, to hear us read a few verses of Scripture. And she wanted to pray … not just be prayed for. Mostly, she prayed for her children.
The daughter lived not far away, but had too many health problems to look in very often. A son lived on the far side of the country. He was good about calling, but didn’t share her faith. She prayed and prayed for his soul.
She prayed, too, for her other son – the one who had walked out of her life decades before, never to be heard from again. He wasn’t a Christian, either. She never stopped wondering what had happened to him … hoping, hoping for a phone call, a postcard, a familiar voice at her door.
Gradually, she felt the certainties slipping away, her eyes failing, her focus drifting. Her dreams and her memories and reality kept teasing her, disguising themselves as each other.
Still, she patiently awaited God’s timing, trusting He had His reasons for her limbo. She asked Him to use her, somehow … kept praying that, even as she slid further and further into mystery.
One day, they brought in another narrow bed and placed another woman in the same bland, cramped bedroom. She was as boisterous and blowsy and chatty as Mrs. Murphy was quiet, observant, demure. They struck up a friendship.
The next time we came with our Bibles and the little box of tiny crackers and grape juice, Mrs. Murphy invited her lonely new friend to join us. She did. Later, Mrs. Murphy talked with her about the Lord. Kept inviting her to pray and read the Bible with her, day after day after day.
Soon, the other woman asked Jesus into her heart.
And not long after, Jesus asked Mrs. Murphy into His home.
It’s said that, as his executioner prepared to cut off his head, Sir Thomas More looked up to tell the man not to worry about what he was doing. “You send me to God,” he said.
“You seem awfully sure of that,” an unkind voice sneered from the watching crowd.
Sir Thomas looked out and smiled.
“He would not refuse one so blithe to go to Him.”
Jean Murphy was blithe to go, too. And she won’t be changing houses, anymore.
The family, distracted with their own dysfunctions, decided not to do a memorial service. Turns out, though, you don’t need one.
It’s enough that Someone remembers.
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