George B. Murray, SJ, MD: Three Short Dialogs and an Appreciation

Dialog the First:       

13 September 1991

Setting:                       Office of George B. Murray, SJ, MD

                                   Warren Building 6th Floor

                                   Massachusetts General Hospital

 Background:              Last few minutes of  fellowship interview 

Murray:                       "Do you want to come here?"

Siberski;`                   "Yeah."

Murray:                       "I'm tough." 

Siberski:                    "No shit!"

Murray:                       "Get a Massachusetts license by July."

Siberski:                    "OK"

 

 

Dialog the Second:    24 August 1997

Setting:                      Baggage carousel Logan Airport

Background:              Arriving in Boston to enter the novitiate of the Society of  Jesus                                                                           

Murray:                      "Those your bags?"

Siberski:                    "Yeah"

Murray:                      "Let's go.  The car is in the lot." 

Siberski:                    "OK"

 

Dialog the Third:       9 June 2007

Setting:                     Church of St. Ignatius, Chestnut Hill, MA

Background:             Murray putting the vestments of a priest on me for the first time                                         

Murray:                     "Ready?"

Siberski:                    "Yeah."

Murray:                     " . . . . . "

Siberski:                   " . . . . . "  (At times words are useless)

 

Former Fellow Beatriz Currier, MD put it best when I asked what being a Murray Fellow meant to her as we spoke at one of the every five year fellow reunions.  She replied, "George turned me into the kind of psychiatrist I wanted to be but didn't know how to become."   I stopped in my tracks, she had put into words exactly what I felt.  I suspect many of the 102 former fellows feel the same thing but may not be able to put it as well. 

 

For a man who vowed perpetual chastity as a Jesuit in 1955 and thus precluded genetic progeny, Murray completed Erikson's stage of generativity vs. stagnation in a manner most men never can and never will approach.  His former fellows celebrate that legacy in our lives and our practice as George's progeny and in our teaching where we prepare his grand-progeny.  

 

George died in his room at Campion Center seven years ago this morning.  His death was sudden though not unexpected.  I had been preparing for it beginning with the eight-day retreat I made just before pronouncing final vows as a Jesuit on 1 October 2013. George witnessed both parts of the vow ceremony, the second being private with only Jesuits in attendance.  He was one of eight in the sacristy.  

 

We had spent day before his death, Sunday 17 November 2013, in the ER at Newton-Wellesley where he had been taken around 11 AM after telling the nurse at the health care center that he had been having some chest pain.  After six or so hours the doc found no evidence of cardiac damage.  We got back to Campion about 6 PM.  He was found dead in his room twelve hours later.  Even at the time it was obvious that his quiet death surrounded by his things, at least some of them, was a great blessing as opposed to CPR, intubation, and all that goes with that. 

 

Planning the funeral, notifying those who needed to be notified, and writing the homily took hours.  At some point that night I poured a few fingers of Macallan 12 year-old, splashed in a bit of ice water, and sat back to reflect, listen to some jazz (Charlie Haden to whose music he introduced me) and to begin to prepare the homily for the funeral which I would celebrate a few days later.  

 

As he did for Dr. Currier, George turned me into a real psychiatrist, challenged me to push beyond sometimes self-imposed limits, and helped me understand how to be a "hyphenated Jesuit" as priest-physician.  The only man to whom I owe more is my dad, also a physician who died at the end of my junior year at Temple Medical (Dad was class of '37 at Temple and I finished in '75).

 

Later on today I will celebrate Mass with one or two others present in the small chapel we created in our satellite community.  Will take the option to wear purple vestments rather than the white the church permits for funerals and memorial Masses, and then, later tonight, pour some 12 year-old Macallan and listen to Charlie Haden.  And I will meditate, pray, contemplate, and recall with tremendous gratitude that I would not be who, where, and what I am today had it not been for the influence of this great man.

 

REQUIEM AETERNAM DONA EIS, DOMINE, 

ET LUX PERPETUA LUCEAT EI. 

__________________________________________________________________

George speaking with the late Father General Adolfo Nicolas, SJ, after I'd pronounced simple vows in the sacristy at Camion Center on 1 October 2013.  He would be dead several weeks later. 

At the Association for Psychosomatic Medicine in New Orleans with former fellows Susan Abbey, MD and the late Anthony Boukoms, MD.   

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD