… to Don Murray.

EDIT: Turns out he penned one last Boston Globe column. They published it January 2. For those of you who don’t have access, it’s below.

Friends’ caring and sharing shows the way

By Donald M. Murray, Globe Correspondent | January 2, 2007

Editor’s Note: Donald M. Murray, who had written this column for two decades, died Saturday at age 82. He filed this piece on Friday. It is his final column.

For those of us who are introspective, life is a continuous exploration into the self, where we hope to find the person we are and the person we may become.

Of course, the apple does not fall far from the tree, and we discover we have become a mixed breed of our parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts. I found this discouraging. I had thought I had made my escape.

Now I accept my genes but imagine I have a tuning dial so that I can adjust their instincts and standards to the life, far different than theirs, I have constructed.

This new life has been created by friends who have seen me as I have not yet been able to see myself. With Yankee respect they have mostly kept their distance, but when they have spoken, or touched a shoulder, or given a smile of encouragement, it has been important to me.

When we lost our daughter Lee at 20, it was the subtle but sturdy support of friends that got us through those first years. They saw us as strong when we felt weak. They said we had done more than enough, when we felt we had done far too little. They gave us a future when we thought there was none.

And then came the years of Minnie Mae’s Parkinson’s. We attended to the hour-by-hour physical demands of living, and then the dementia arrived, and again it was friends who supported and guided me. I often felt like a huge ship being nudged into port by friendly tugs.

These friends and neighbors, too many to name, were there when I began a new life alone.

First they eliminated much of the alone with their invitations and visits. They approved future relationships before I had imagined them. They suggested small steps of independence and supported me when I took them.

And what I have learned?

To pass the friendship on. To speak out, to touch, to be there when others need me.