67 Quotes by Liz Murray

If I had a magic wand, I would live in a building in New York, big enough so my friends, my family could all have apartments in it. We’d raise our kids in the same space and have backyard barbecues and get old and fat together.

Dream, but don’t sleep.

This was the environment in which I finally came to my education, the environment in which I knew I could no longer lie in bed and give up. How could I pull the blanket back over my head when I knew my teachers were waiting for me? When they were willing to work so hard, how could I not do the same?

Life has a way of doing that; one minute everything makes sense, the next, things change. People get sick. Families break apart, your friends could close the door on you. The rapid changes I had experienced were hitting me hard as I sat there, and yet sadness wasn’t what came up in my gut. Out of nowhere, for whatever reason, a different feeling snuck up in its place, hope. If life could change for the worst, I thought, the maybe life could change for the better.

Gene Murry, the box said, underscored by bold letters reading, Head, and Feet, to note the direction. Carlos knew how much that bothered me. With his black marker, he drew a flowing angel on the front of your box, and filled in all the correct information: Jean Marie Murray. August 27, 1954–December 18, 1996. Beloved Mother of Lisa and Elizabeth Murray and Wife of Peter Finnerty.

It’s not that we didn’t love one another- we did. I just think we didn’t know how to be with one another anymore. No one had prepared us for this, for what to do when tragedy breaks up your family. We had no idea what to do when disease took hold, mental illness struck, when Ma died. And we weren’t prepared for what happens when proximity no longer brings you together, and instead connecting became a matter of making an effort toward one another. We were doing the best we cold with what we had.

In this way, compared to some, I could have explained to Carlos, I had it easy. I’d been practicing all my life for this, carrying things. For others it came as a shock. No matter how exhausted we were or what slant he put on our situation, I was only breaking night, fending off the dark until the sun rose each day, when I’d start over, ready and able to do it again.

Ma was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease she’d had since birth. This meant she was entitled to welfare, and our lives revolved around the first day of every month when her payment was due.

Since as far back as I could remember, I’d felt that Lisa’s responses toward me usually bordered on the brink of hostility. Years later, a therapist would explain that growing up with few resources had turned us into competitors- over food, over our parents’ love, over everything. At the moment, we were competing for who had the better handle on Ma’s illness, and we both knew she was winning.