Breaking Night

by Liz Murray

  From Prep, I called the office of admissions every Friday like clockwork to ask whether or not a decision had been reached and if so, had my letter been mailed, and every Friday I got the same response: “The committee has not yet rendered its final decision,” but, I was “welcome to call again,” and of course I should expect an answer by mail, soon.

  Then one Friday, at last, something different. While she could not give out specific admission information over the phone, a secretary informed me that a decision had in fact been reached and a response had been mailed. I should receive it any day now, if it wasn’t in my mailbox already. I hung up the phone and all but danced around the office at Prep; I went looking for my teachers.

  For months I had hounded them incessantly with my school-related questions, and they had shown me the patience of saints. Caleb’s father was a professor at Harvard, so he’d gotten the worst of it. On more than one occasion, I’d cornered Caleb after hours, in that tiny office of his, interrupting his work and mining him for information. Does your dad know how the committee decides? Do people from the wait-list ever really get in? Perry was another frequent recipient of my pestering. His tendency to listen carefully to others and to take time to be decisive and sincere left Perry totally vulnerable to my relentless need to talk about it. Looking back on that time now, I don’t know how my teachers put up with me, when no amount of talking was enough to have me cease my worrying.

  That afternoon, I scoured the office for someone I could share the news with. Luckily for them, most of the teachers were in a meeting. Only Perry was available, in his office, the same office where he’d interviewed me almost two years ago, back when I’d judged him to be one of “those people,” back when I couldn’t look him, or anyone, directly in the eyes. I found Perry at his desk. He looked up at me with friendly curiosity. “Well hello,” he said, putting down his pen to turn toward me.

  “Good news, Perry, they mailed the letter. I’m going to find out . . . It could be in my mailbox right now.”

  “Oh . . . Well, good,” Perry responded, and he leaned back in his chair and began smiling widely at me, an amused expression across his face. “Great,” he added. And then he didn’t say a word, nothing else. I had expected just a little more enthusiasm than that.

  “It’s exciting,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Liz, it is exciting,” he said, laughing a bit. His expression was more of a smirk than a smile.

  “I mean, this is it,” I said, as though to force my excitement onto him. “It’s the moment . . . Soon I’ll know.”

  Perry’s expression, familiar to me from two years of being his student, told me I was about to get some advice.

  “What?” I asked, smiling nervously at him. “You have this look.” I respected Perry’s opinion, and if he had some private joke in his head, I wanted to know what it was. He leaned forward and with a shrug of his shoulders he said something that will stick with me always.

  “It’s exciting, Liz . . . But I hope you understand that no matter where you go to school, you’ll always be you. Wherever you go, college, job interviews, relationships, all of it . . . the answer from Harvard really is only incidental to who you are. So cut yourself a break . . . You really will be fine either way.”

  If I didn’t love and trust Perry, I might have thought he was undermining something very important to me. Or, at the very least, that he was simply too privileged to understand why Harvard mattered so much for someone like me, because unlike him, I could not afford to be so casual. But I did love and respect Perry, and my trust in him told me to take his words into consideration. I nodded and said, “Okay, Perry,” but I was obviously unsettled.

  “Look, Liz, all I mean is, wherever you go, you’ll make the best of things. Look at your life, you already have . . . That’s why I know you’ll be all right. . . . Try and relax, have some compassion for yourself.”

  Those words stopped me. The idea that I deserved or could even afford to relax, and the notion of compassion—for myself . . .

  On the train ride home and in bed that night (after I returned to find nothing in my mailbox), I lay awake and mulled over Perry’s words, let them echo in my head as I considered their implications. In my ceaseless fight for survival, I had simply not taken even a single moment to consider the enormity of all that had happened to me, and how I might have been impacted by it. But how could I take a moment? There had been too much to do. Every day there had been some pressing need to handle, some schoolwork to complete, some urgent problem that needed solving.

  But lying in bed that night, Perry’s words slowed my life’s frantic pace and gave me permission to take time, not to do anything, just to think and to feel. In my darkened bedroom, alone, what surfaced was not easy. Underneath all the achievement and bustle of my life was a heartbreaking catalog of losses: Daddy surrendering me to the state with absolutely no protest; Ma in the hospital room that day, her mouth moving noiselessly over words; nights spent alone in a staircase, wondering how long it would take anyone to notice if I disappeared. Under the blankets, I lay there and allowed my feelings to take me over. I tasted the salt of my tears, let them flow, felt the places in my heart that were the most broken, and I finally allowed myself the space to mourn. I cried until I no longer had to.

  When I let myself experience my sorrow and I did not resist it or cover it with any distraction, another experience surfaced. Willing to face my pain, I began to see its inverse. The invisible victories of my life came into focus: the countless acts of love toward my parents; getting myself out of bed those mornings at friends’ houses to go to school; earning a paycheck that I used to take care of myself; taking the hair out of my face to risk eye contact; my loving friendships; and every single day that I kept on going, when I would so much rather not have. Accepting my sorrow, I then was able to accept my strength in the face of so much loss.

  More than anything, though, I took into my heart the knowledge that I was in fact all right, as Perry had said. Terrible things had happened, but they were not happening now. I was no longer sleeping outside, but safe in my bed. And then for the first night in months, I focused on something other than my admission letter, and I let the knowledge that I was finally safe relax me to sleep.

  The next day, on a sweltering Saturday in June, I took a book out to the front stoop and had a seat, where I waited for the mailman. Hours passed. The ice cream truck circled the block. I saw mothers wearing spandex pants and plastic flip-flops, clutching thick key chains, perched on stoops, eyes trained on their children. Latin music blasted from someone’s speakers high up on a floor above. I tapped my foot relentlessly, sweating under the sun, ticking away at the pages of my book. I kept my eye on the corner, searching for any sight of him.

  Finally, some time in the early afternoon, I looked up to find the mailman standing just four buildings away from me. I shut my book. Someone stopped him to make conversation, holding him there.

  Will the envelope be big or small?

  The ice cream truck pulled over and children clamored to the window ahead of their parents. Someone had opened the fire hydrant for relief from the intense heat. Nearby, teenagers bounced a basketball. I watched the mailman drawing closer, slowly. I knew that very likely in that bag he was carrying the letter. But in this moment of anticipation, I soothed myself using Perry’s words, “You’ll be fine either way.”

  With months of angst and worry, fret and fuss, here was the answer I’d been waiting for, and yet I did not feel the distress I expected to feel as I waited. A simple realization took its place: The letter already stated whatever it stated, and there was nothing I could do now to change that. In this moment it was clear to me that I had already done everything I could do.

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference . . .

  Things turning around for me had been the result of my focusing on the few areas in life I could change, and
surrendering to the knowledge that there were many more things that I just couldn’t make different.

  I could not rescue Sam from her family life, but I could be her friend. I could never change Carlos, but I could leave that relationship and take care of myself. I couldn’t heal my parents, as much as I wanted to, but I could forgive and love them.

  I could also choose to carve out a life for myself that was in no way limited by what had already occurred in my past.

  Watching the mailman approach, I realized that the letter from Harvard, whatever it would reveal, would not make or break my life. Instead, what I was beginning to understand was that however things unfolded from here on, whatever the next chapter was, my life could never be the sum of one circumstance. It would be determined, as it had always been, by my willingness to put one foot in front of the other, moving forward, come what may.

  Epilogue

  I WAS SEATED IN THE MAIN EXHIBIT HALL OF A CONFERENCE CENTER in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one person in a crowd of people waiting for the Dalai Lama to take the stage. It was the thick of summer and the air conditioning was weak, so my skirt suit got itchy, causing me to shift in my seat, which was near the front, stage-side. I had to strain to find a good view over the heads of the people in front of me, an audience of top-performing CEOs from different countries around the world. Seven hundred of them had gathered for their annual conference of networking and inspiration; the Dalai Lama was their keynote address. After him, I would take the stage as the next presenter.

  As the Dalai Lama spoke, a handful of CEOs had the rare opportunity to ask him questions. Most of the inquiries were complex—political or philosophical in nature—and in response, the Dalai Lama gave generously of his time. With the help of a translator, his Holiness took nearly ten to fifteen minutes to answer each question in painstaking detail. When his time finally drew to a close, a point person searched the room to choose who would get to ask the final question. As a fellow presenter that day, that person happened to be me. I was allowed to ask the Dali Lama a single question. But what would I ask? All eyes fell on me in the hushed exhibit hall; hundreds of CEOs and his Holiness himself stared and waited. What happened next would turn out to reveal one of the greatest life lessons I have ever learned. But I will get back to that lesson later.

  First, a little explanation of how that day came to be. That day with the Dalai Lama became yet another occurrence in my life that caused my friends in the Bronx to tease me with my nickname: “Forrest Gump.” Over the years, they have grown used to me traveling to various countries, working with thousands of people to deliver workshops and speeches to inspire others. In New York City I founded and currently direct Manifest Living, a company that empowers adults to create lives that are most meaningful to them. In doing this work, it just so happened, I found a path that has become most meaningful to me.

  I had no idea things would turn out this way. It started after the New York Times article; other media followed. There were magazine articles, awards, a half-hour 20/20 special, and even a Lifetime Television movie, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. What unfolded from there was a series of events so rich and detailed that they cannot be told in this short space—they are another story altogether. What I can say here is that my years at Harvard up until my graduation in 2009 were packed with experiences that taught me lessons about the strength of the human spirit; the truth that people from all walks of life face adversity and must learn to overcome it. Ultimately these experiences inspired me to develop workshops designed to empower people to change their own lives, which is my passion, and the work that I dedicate my life to today.

  Over the years, I traveled, took part-time study, full-time study, and even year-long breaks in my education, and I kept my home base in New York City, where the biggest grounding force in my life became my relationships with friends and the time I spent caring for my father.

  Daddy quit drugs after he was diagnosed HIV positive. His shelter played a vital role in connecting him to the right medical resources for each one of his illnesses. When all was said and done, after more than thirty years of hard-core drug abuse, Daddy was HIV positive, his heart needed massive repair requiring open-heart surgery, he had hepatitis C, and over three quarters of his liver was cirrhotic, gnarled as a calcified sponge.

  One afternoon, in the middle of one of my early semesters at college, I was walking through Harvard Yard when I received a phone call about Daddy from a doctor who spoke in a hushed voice that told me it was serious. As Peter Finnerty’s medical proxy, I’d “better hurry to New York before it was too late,” he said. Daddy had had a heart attack and was on life support. I rushed for a bus to get to him (a trip that had become routine) and, shortly after I arrived, the priest stood over Daddy’s bed, reading him his last rites. I held Daddy’s hand and searched his face for signs of life, but his eyes were shut tight and the tubes through which he was breathing just pushed his chest up and down, his forehead crinkled as though frozen in worry.

  Somehow, Daddy survived this and other brushes with death, and so my friends—who helped care for him and who also liked to tease Daddy to keep him in high spirits—gave him a nickname, something that made Daddy chuckle after they removed the intubation tube: “Peter Infinity,” for his ability to survive a mountain of life-threatening medical conditions. He found the name so funny that when the nurse signed his discharge papers he repeated it to her, trying (unsuccessfully) to get her to laugh, insisting out loud that he had “more lives than a cat.” I wheeled Daddy out the sliding doors of Mt. Sinai Hospital onto the sunny streets of New York City, and from that moment on I took full responsibility for his care.

  Once it became clear that death was a constant possibility for Daddy, I asked him to move in with me in my New York apartment. He required a firm regimen of medical care to keep him alive, which included rotations to the key doctors, ongoing blood work, constant (often painful) medical exams, chemotherapy for his Hep C, and, to help contain the viral load of his HIV, antiretroviral meds as well. Or the “cocktail,” as his doctors called it—medication made available to HIV patients only after Ma had died. Getting Daddy’s needs met, staying on track in college, and traveling internationally to deliver my workshops and speeches shaped the next few years of my life. There were many ups and downs during this period, and I could not have gotten through it without the love of my friends.

  The support that sprang up around me was nothing short of a miracle. Through every twist and turn in our lives, my friends and I were there for one another and in the process, we truly became a family. There were my longtime friends like Bobby, Eva, James, Jamie, Sam, and Josh, and also new ones who came to stay, like Ruben and Edwin. We celebrated birthdays and holidays together, and even lent a hand with one another’s families when it was needed. On any given day I could come in from Boston to find Daddy at home watching the latest episode of Law & Order in the living room with Edwin sitting beside him; they would be splitting a bag of cookies and laughing together.

  Whenever I had to travel or be away at school, Edwin (Ed), whom I met through Eva, faithfully took Daddy to all of his medical appointments, bought and carried Daddy’s groceries, and made sure he had clean clothing and hot meals. More than that, he became Daddy’s friend. Ed and I purposefully kept apartments within walking distance of one another in New York and whenever I could be home, we spent our days taking trips to the local diner with Daddy, or to the movies, where we helped Daddy sneak his contraband Snickers bars and water bottle into the theater. Ed and I shared a smile each time Daddy unwrapped the candy bars before the flickering movie screen with a pleased little smirk across his face. In those moments I do believe Ed and I witnessed in Daddy a glimmer of pride for outsmarting “the man” just one more time in his life.

  Lisa and Sam ultimately landed on their feet. Today, Sam is happily married and lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband. After years of struggle and her own ups and downs, Lisa successfully graduated from Purchase College
in New York State. Today, she is a schoolteacher for autistic children. Jamie has two children and is married, living in Nevada. Bobby is in school studying to be a nurse, and he is happily married with two children. We remain essential parts of each other’s lives.

  In the last few years of Daddy’s life, after I had spent some time away from school to live in New York and see him through heart surgery, I returned to Cambridge to complete college, and Daddy came with me. We rented a five-bedroom house near Harvard, one bedroom for each of us: Ed, Ruben, Ed’s little cousin whom he took care of, Daddy, and me. Just a month before Daddy died, Ed and I took him on a long-awaited trip to San Francisco. Daddy insisted on showing us areas he said were meaningful to him in his youth. We never asked for details, and he didn’t offer any. Ed and I just followed Daddy to his favorite spots: Haight-Ashbury, Alcatraz, and his beloved City Lights Bookstore. Together, we stood before old wooden shelves where Daddy skimmed the pages of Allen Ginsberg’s and Jack Kerouac’s books, privately smiling at familiar passages. When we flew back to Boston at the end of that week, and I was alone in my room, I found a card that Daddy secretly put inside my suitcase. It read:

  “Lizzy, I left my dreams behind a long time ago, but I know now that they are safe with you. Thank you for making us a family again.”

  I taped the card high up above my desk, right where I did all my papers and school assignments, so that I could look at it while I worked. Each time I saw Daddy’s familiar bold script, it filled me with love for my father and a certain peace, knowing that he was nearby, warm and safe.

  Just three weeks later, Daddy went to sleep upstairs, and he did not wake up. His heart gave out in his sleep. Daddy was eight years sober and sixty-four years old when he died. For much of those eight years, he led a weekly “relapse prevention group” for recovering addicts, and he kept a tight circle of friends from the group whom he loved dearly. The night he died in my apartment, I found myself in my bedroom surrounded by friends. Eva, Ruben, Ed, and a couple more friends dragged two extra mattresses into my bedroom so that we could huddle near one another under blankets and talk. We shut the door tight so that Ed and I would not have to hear the crackle of policemen’s walkie-talkies and the medical examiner carrying Daddy out of our home.