Hugh Murphy 1924 - 2008

Today my friend Murph died.

I've been trying to think about what I want to say about him and all I keep seeing is a reel of moments in his life like you would see on a soap opera episode when the character is killed off and they show flashbacks of his time on the show set to music.

There is music in my Murphy reel, but for some reason, I can't hear it. I just know it is there.




It starts out with him sitting in his wheelchair in the front lobby of the rehab center where we would sit and talk while we waited for the van to pick him up to take him to his radiation treatments. From there the reel, like my slide show of pictures on my Picasa computer program, goes just slow enough to take in the scene, to remember when it actually happened. I see him coming into the lobby of the pool where I first met him 18 years ago. He is walking beside his bicycle, wheeling it in with him.

Murphy: "How ya doing, kid?"

He and the bike disappear through the men's room door out to the pool.

I see him in the deep end of the pool with his swim buoys. He is facing me and talking. Then he is back in the wheelchair upstairs in the rehab center yelling, "Cara, Baby!" I see him coming toward the deep end of the pool with his water cuffs on his ankles, his swim buoys in his hand, his gnarled toes scraping the pool deck as he walks. And then he is diving in, and I hear his imitation of Al Pacino in the movie, Scent of a Woman, his favorite thing to yell as he is sucked into the depths of the water, "Whoo-ah!"

I see him as he is in the picture above sitting in my backyard, and then he is gone, reappearing in the pool again. I see the back of his head and he water walks across the deep end, burping and then saying in a mocking way, "Excuse me, Cara."

I see him on the Pinellas trail riding his bike, waving as he goes by.

I see him in the pool with his flippers, lying face down as he swims freestyle from one end of the 25-meter pool to the other. Then he is at the end of the pool, looking up at me, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes.

Murphy: "How ya doing, kid?"

I see him outside in the courtyard of the rehab center, his forearms on the armrest of his wheelchair, his hands clasped, asking my daughter questions.

I see him reclining in his favorite chair at his house and then he is sitting next to me at the Mexican restaurant telling me this food will make me fat, eat up.

I see him through the mirror as he combs his hair in the bathroom at the rehab center. Then he is back in the pool on his back, spitting water up into the air like a whale. I see him on the couch in my living room letting my daughter put bows into his hair.

The pictures come a bit faster and I hear his voice as each memory flickers past:

"How's Tom?"

"Cara, can you hear me?"

"How are the kids?"

"You have a good memory, you know that?"

"You're right. Your always right, Cara."

"In my house, Nancy is the boss. Nan-nu!"

"Thanks for coming."

Then I see him out of the pool, his shoulders rounded, his towel around his neck, and he is pushing his bike and heading out the side gate at the pool, and as he passes me he thumps the lifeguard chair and I hear, "I'll see ya, kid. Take care." And then there is darkness.

And then the reel starts over again.