By Sarah E. Murphy

Yesterday marked nine years since my father’s death.

Nearly a decade since I watched from my parents’ bedroom window as the undertaker arrived to take Dad from 36 Grand Ave, and us, forever.

A date I dread and feel in my bones as it approaches each year, like the sudden shift from summer to fall.  A flu-like heaviness in my body, one of the tell-tale signs and symptoms of grief.

I woke to the news of Maggie Smith’s death, like a kick in the gut, my mind flashing to her first performance I ever saw, the proper and persnickety yet endearing cousin Charlotte in “A Room With A View,” a movie I fell in love with in junior high and partially inspired my four trips to Italy.

I inherited my dad’s wanderlust, and I’ve spent three of his anniversaries there, a place he visited on his European travels in the summer of 1959. Somehow, I feel closer to him in a country where I don’t know a soul and can’t speak the language beyond my college Italian, thousands of miles away from Falmouth Heights, the place where I grew up, a place he was so proud to call home. 

Yesterday, as I’ve done on my travels, I wanted to honor my dad by spending the day celebrating his life rather than mourning his death. While fighting exhaustion after a long and busy week, my husband Chris brought me to Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where my dad spent the last 25 years of his career, beginning in 1980, after many years as a junior high and high school teacher and administrator in Natick and Sandwich.

Chair of the English Department at MMA, he specialized in public speaking and creative writing (while also teaching at Boston College), impacting his cadets and changing their lives simply by doing what he did best – believing in people and making them believe in themselves. It’s one of the things about him I miss the most. As someone who has always struggled with feeling inadequate, for many reasons, he made me feel not only *good enough but *more than enough.

He understood, suffering from “Imposter Syndrome” before it was a term. He had been physically and emotionally abused by the nuns at Our Lady’s in Newton, who shamed him into thinking he wasn’t smart enough to pursue his dream of attending Boston College, like some of his more well-off classmates, primarily due to the fact his family was “poor.”  He knew what it was like to be judged and made to feel inferior.

My dad was the polar opposite of the nuns. At MMA, he helped countless students – and staff – awaken their creativity by providing a safe, supportive environment, paramount to any type of learning, but particularly, public speaking and creative writing. In a place where uniformity was the norm, he offered an outlet for self-expression, including establishing the school’s first theater group, the Maritime Players. While some of those actors hadn’t performed since high school, some had never even stepped foot on a stage.

Yesterday, I wandered around the empty, hallowed halls of Mass Maritime. He never actually called it that; it was either “the Academy,” or “the Maritime.” It’s a place that has elicited unexpected comfort since my father’s death, where Chris brought me on my birthday a few years ago, the way some people might visit a church.

It fills me with pride to think of all the people Jim Murphy aka “Professor Murph” impacted – the careers, families, and personal pursuits he influenced and even helped make possible by being a mentor beyond the classroom.

When I was little, I loved when Dad would bring me to work, feeling so proud and as he introduced me to his colleagues, and the simple joys of riding the elevator, checking his mailbox, and pretending to self-importantly answer calls on his office phone. When I was in high school, and we got our second Great Dane, Sinead, Dad and I would take her to a veterinarian down the street from MMA, giving us another chance to spend one-on-one time together.

I wandered into the empty Faculty Lounge yesterday and sat in one of the chairs that were probably there when he was. I could so vividly picture him holding court and telling jokes, putting people at ease with his easygoing nature and self-deprecating (and sometimes irreverent) humor.

I then found myself in the small auditorium where 20 years ago, I watched Dad’s production of “Charley’s Aunt” while seated in the upper right corner.

I picked up the microphone, imagining him offering stage direction to actors or helpful (and invaluable) feedback to cadets performing their speeches.

I wanted to stay for hours.

As I walked back to the car, where Chris was waiting for me, I noticed a white feather on the ground, a sign from my dad signifying a story he used to tell his children, which I later discovered began with my Papa Murphy.

I showed Chris excitedly, for he knows the significance, and he remarked how he had just been watching a white feather fall slowly from the sky, seemingly taking forever, as if suspended in time.

“I was thinking about that day when your dad gave me a tour and introduced me to some of the people he worked with,” he said.

My father’s encouragement contributed to my husband’s decision to pursue college for the first time when he was in his 30s, ultimately earning a degree in Environmental Technology at Cape Cod Community College.

Chris and I walked around the Cape Cod Canal, taking in the sights of a serene evening – families fishing, kids on scooters, dogs greeting each other on the Rail Trail, as we watched the train bridge lower to make way for the dinner train.

At the mom and pop burger place (across from the old Port o’ Call where the cadets used to hang out), I ordered a vanilla frappe with my dinner in honor of the ultimate treat Dad would bring on his way home from work when you were lucky enough to be sick on the couch but not too sick to enjoy a Friendly’s Fribble.

Simple joys. Timeless gifts.

I’m relieved September 27 is over. I thought I might make it through the day without crying, especially to my mother, for I don’t ever want to contribute to her sadness. But I found myself fighting tears often, and when she returned my call last night, I broke down.

“So what did you do today,” she asked.

I told her where we went, hesitating to explain why, as my voice faltered.

“I wanted to be somewhere I feel close to him,” I said, starting to cry and immediately apologizing.

“What a beautiful thing to do. And don’t ever apologize for being in touch with your feelings, especially when so many people in this world aren’t,” she said.

“That’s your poetic soul. You’re just like your father.”