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08/04/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

A short distance and a lot of time

Yesterday after church my new car and I set about the business of finding Westfield, Indiana. It is a suburb of Indianapolis and I had traveled there two years ago for a Murphy cousins reunion at my cousin Sarah’s house. Somewhere at home I have pictures of all of us as kids: Jack, Janice (Uncle John and Aunt Gertrude), Ann, Carolyn, Elaine, Jane, Sarah (Uncle Pat and Aunt Audrey), and me, the only child of Howard and Jacqueline Murphy. We were cute little Murphy’s whose families were eventually separated by careers and geography.

We’re all gray-hairs now, in our seventies and eighties. Half of us have made our transitions. Sarah is the latest one to leave the planet. Jack left last year. Janice died some 10 years ago. My cousin, Ann, made her transition years ago, after a short but vicious bout with cancer. Ann was the cousin with whom I stayed most of the time. She was a nurse, very competent and in charge of almost everything. Before she died I made a short trip to see her and be of whatever help I could. The only other thing I ever did for her was to stay with our Aunt Olive once so Ann and her family could make a well-deserved out of town trip. 

What I remember most about that trip was that Jackie, who was maybe 3 or 4, somehow got into Aunt Olive’s pill bottles. We never knew if she took any of them, but Aunt Olive, also a nurse, happened to have a bottle of Ipecac on hand (no one but a nurse would keep that in their home). The poison control center advised us to give it to Jackie. Poor baby sat on the edge of the kitchen sink while the Ipecac did its work. As an aside, in her small child-hood, she once confessed that she may have eaten some mushrooms from Grammy’s yard and got the Ipecac blast once more. I don’t think she’s ever eaten another mystery mushroom again.

After church yesterday I visited the drive-through Starbucks across the street from church, fortified myself with an iced coffee and hit the highway. The trip to Indianapolis is simple – get on 70 East and stay on it for 280 miles. My Onstar friend helped me find the hotel in Westfield. As I was pulling in to a parking place, my Chicago cousin Elaine pulled in next to me. I met her two sons and a granddaughter for the first time. The five of us had dinner together at a very good Thai restaurant across the street.

The four cousins who are left are gathering for Cousin Sarah’s funeral today. She died last week, very suddenly and unexpectedly, on her 78^th birthday. She and I were the youngsters in the group. Next month I’ll be 76, hard to believe but very real. In a few hours we will gather at Saint Mark’s Methodist church for a visitation and funeral. Elaine tells me there will be a lot of people there, partly because Sarah was so active at church, and being a social being, she has lots of friends and family.

Sarah’s daughter, Nora, and I have something in common. We are both only children. I just want to spend a few minutes with her and share the grief that comes with being an only child when your mother dies. The last time I saw Nora she was just a kid, and, along with my two kids, we met at a family reunion that had to be at least 35 years ago. Now Nora has her own brood of three teenagers. Proving once again that time flies and children grow up and have their own kids. 

There will be a luncheon after the funeral. I was going to start for home after the funeral but have since decided to stay. It is an hour later here in Indiana, so I will gain an hour on the way home and it won’t be too late when I get there. Besides, there are cousins and second cousins to meet and greet. 

So I will head West after lunch, and Sarah’s family and sisters will head East, to the Murphy family plot outside of Winchester, Indiana. It is a sweet little old cemetery on a hill with lots of trees. It’s name is Buena Vista, but in Indiana lingo it is simply “Beunie”. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are buried there. There’s a lot of history on that hill that holds the memories of hard-working, good farming people. Rest in Peace, Murphy clan.