Agent Murray's Down!

“Can you please explain to me how Murray wound up dead on your doorstep?” the accusing agent on the other end of the line asked.


I pulled up the collar of my trench coat to keep out the cold fog and tried to fumble around for an explanation that would be sufficient. 

What could I possibly say that would excuse Murray‘s death on my watch? 

The fog thickened swallowing me and my inexplicable shame.


************************


I rolled over, the phone in my hand and looked at the clock.


Six-thirty a.m. Who the hell is Murray?


“Who is this?” I mumbled, still half asleep. “I think you have the wrong number…”


I placed the phone back on the bedside table and grumbled at being dragged from sleep so early on a Sunday morning.

The phone rang again, and this time, I was surprised to recognize the voice as that of my neighbor, Sharon.


“I want to know what happened to Murray!” she demanded angrily, “and how come he’s dead on your doorstep.”


“I don’t know anyone named Murray. What are you talking about?” I struggled up onto my elbow in exasperation.


Sharon and I had been neighbors for years, and we had what could, at best, be described as an unusual relationship. When I first moved in I was married with two and a half kids (I was pregnant with Erin), and she was a single mom with two. I offered to babysit any time she needed to get away.


I babysat for her a few times when her girls were little, and she took my little ones the Easter I had pneumonia and my husband was out supposedly on a camping trip with the bicycle club from school.


When I became a single mom, she occasionally watched my kids, and our kids often played together. But we were not what you’d call friends even by a wild stretch of the imagination.

And I can’t say why. We just didn’t get along, though my kids liked her, and hers liked me.


Every Friday afternoon, her daughters came to borrow my vacuum cleaner and rattled it down the paved driveway we shared to their house. 

And I occasionally sent my kids to borrow an egg from her in a pinch.


When I began teaching at San Gabriel with her, she became more critical of me and we sometimes got into creative differences on projects – probably because we were the two most creative teachers on the staff and just had different opinions on most everything.  I think she was threatened by my creativity.


So it was no surprise that I’d never heard of Murray, the recently acquired dog. 

They had a series of short-lived pets - mostly dogs, but a few cats as well. The girls would beg her for a dog until they wore her down and after a week or a month, they would return the dog to the pound.


She just wasn’t the animal type, but she kept giving in and then regretting it.


So I didn’t even know when they got Murray. But they’d apparently let him out of the house in the pre-dawn light, not wanting to walk him to do his morning thing. And my best guess is that he got hit by a car in the fog, and made it as far as my back door steps before dying.


Once I realized what Sharon was saying over that phone, it was my turn to become indignant. Uncharacteristically for me, I snapped at her, asking why she would be so irresponsible and telling her I’d appreciate her getting the dead dog off my porch before my kids got up! I generally tried to just turn the other cheek in irrational moments like this, but this time, I failed.

*************************************************

Why is it that we as people always feel the need to place blame?


I remember, when I was young, the childish battles in the Carson household. You can’t have four kids within a six year age range and not have battles. Mostly over board games.


And somehow it got exponentially worse with the addition of the step-siblings. With six of us between the ages of ten and sixteen, it’s a wonder we didn’t kill each other.


Especially if Cameron was involved. He could be counted on to always cheat - it was just a question of how long it would take. And the others of us would occasionally be the guilty person.


Before the advent of the ‘steps,’ accepting blame was not generally a difficult thing in our household. The guilty one would either admit it on their own, or would be outed by someone else and all would be forgiven and that would be that.


But with the coming of the ‘steps,’ blame became a horrible, caustic thing that destroyed and devoured. 

The slightest, most innocent of mistakes became a court martial offense with unrealistic punishments and unforgivable stigma.


So it was always a joyful occasion for my siblings on day’s the maid, Rosa, had to bring her son Calvin to work with her. 

He became the natural scapegoat for all mistakes or shortcomings. 

And on the occasion when there was nothing to blame on poor Calvin, our step-brother, Cameron, would invent some just to see the wrath of Rosa rain down upon poor guileless Calvin.

**********************************************

I guess it was my anguish over the whippings Calvin took on everyone else’s behalf that taught me early not to place blame or accuse in anger. So it was completely against my character to snap at Sharon - even if it had been her negligence that caused me to awaken to accusations of killing her dog.


She had her ex-husband come remove the corpse of agent Murray, and we never spoke of it again. In fact, we pretty much never spoke again. I mean, we sat together in worship at school every day, and at faculty meetings.  I would smile and give her a friendly nod when she walked by my house on the way to hers each afternoon. But she would not even acknowledge me. And I have to admit, it would make my blood boil at times.


Her girls still came and borrowed my vacuum every Friday afternoon. And my kids were still welcome to visit at her house to watch videos. But that was the extent of our relationship.


It pained me greatly when Caren, one of the other teachers (and Sharon’s only close friend) announced one day that Sharon had been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. But she made it very clear that Sharon didn’t want anybody’s sympathy or to discuss it with anyone.


I sent Sharon a note telling her I would be there for her in any capacity she or the girls might need me. And the girls began to lean on me when they needed rides to the grocery store, or to work. But Sharon still walked by my house, and by me, without so much as a nod.


So you could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened the front door one Friday afternoon to find Sharon standing there, still a very beautiful woman - even with the scarf wrapped around her now bald head.


“Umm… Hello there…! Please…come in…”


She held up her hand in front of my face and said, “Be quiet. I have something to tell you and I don’t want you to talk.”


So very Sharon-like. But I stood silently and for the first time in over a decade, she looked me in the eye without anger.


“You know about my cancer. Well, it’s gotten to be more than just Caren can handle and I don’t have any other friends who I can count on. So I’m coming to you.”


I opened my mouth, knowing that in polite conversation this would be my turn to speak, but she held up her hand again to stop me. And after refusing once again my invitation to come inside and sit down like civilized people, she spilled it all out right there on my doorstep.


She told me about her diagnosis, the prognosis, the symptoms, her schedule for chemotherapy, her medications and doctors’ names and even her blood type. 

Almost without stopping for breath, as though she was afraid either she or I might cop out if she did.


And after the first few bits of information, I began to panic, realizing what a horrible memory I have. Lord, please help me to remember all of this! I prayed anxiously.


“…and I know we’ve never been friends before, but I need a friend now and I know you are the only one I can ask, and you will be there for me anyway.”


And then finally she stopped, whether because she was done or she just ran out of steam, I am not sure.


“Okay,” I said simply, almost fearful of trying to speak again.


Then she nodded at me, said thank you, and walked away.


And I think it is at that point that I realized most fully how silly the blame game is. 

When someone is dying of stage four cancer, who cares who started it. She had obviously gotten past whatever terrible wrong I’d committed against her. Our bitterly arguing over who was to blame for poor Murray’s death now seemed shamefully childish.


I wish I could say that Sharon and I had a nice long sit down conversation and became the best of friends, but that is not how it went. 

She was still Sharon; stubborn and proud. If she needed me, she’d call her daughter at work and have her call me. And I would go down the drive to her house and let myself in to give her her medication or sit by her bed and hold a bucket while she wretched into it.


Sometimes I would just sit quietly by her bed holding her hand. Or pray aloud with her while she held my hand and trembled. Or sometimes I would just sit there and tell her stories, talking long into the dark night until she finally drifted into sleep, no longer haunted by the demons that haunted her most in the dark aloneness.

But we never talked.  To each other in a back and for conversation. Sharon didn't know know me at all, really, even after living next to me for fifteen years.  But I guess she at least knew my character, and that was enough for her to know she could count on me in the end.


She died that September, less than a year after diagnosis, and we buried her on September 10th, 2001, just one day before the twin towers fell. I even stood and spoke at her funeral because Caren said she just couldn’t do it.


After the funeral, when my son (who had been her student, and who had been very close to her) came home, he said, “Wow mom.”


I assumed he was talking about the overwhelming experience of having someone so close to you die and tried to find words that might help him.


“No, mom,” he said. “It’s not that.”


“Oh?”


“I can’t believe you stood up there in front of the whole church and spoke at her funeral like that. I mean…” and here he hesitated a bit. “I mean… she wasn’t even nice to you!”


He’d not understood her animosity to me any better than I had over the years. 

He also told me many times that he didn’t understand why I still was always respectful of, and to her, when she treated me with nothing but contempt. 

I told him simply because it was because it was the right thing to do.


So when they needed someone to stand up and speak about her and read the short notes written by her students or other faculty members at her funeral, I said I would do it, as I had promised her I would do whatever was needed of me. (Even though I really hate speaking in front of a crowd.) 

It wasn't about me.


I told him that it didn’t matter how she treated me. It was more important how I responded. That God doesn’t tell us to be nice to those who are nice to you. He doesn’t say to turn your back on those who are mean to you.


He says love your neighbor as yourself.


Liz Carson Rosas
16 July 2009






"This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"                  Matt 22:38 & 39




"Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." 
                                                                             Col. 3:13