Laughter, Love and Legacy: How David Murphy’s Memory Lives On Through Giving

David Murphy’s gravestone reads, “he loved to laugh” and his smile is remembered in the hearts of those who loved and cared for him. It was an Easterseals Northern California therapist who was the first person in the world to make him smile.

His mother, Edie Reba Murphy, remembers it clearly. At 9-months-old, her firstborn was working with his speech language pathologist, Frances, when a bright orange squeaky toy caught his attention. Reba can still imitate the way David’s smile stretched across his face slowly, first on one side, then the other.

David was legally blind but could track movement with the help of some very cute glasses and, as it turned out, he could hear.

“It made us both cry, because we’d certainly seen him cry in anguish, but we hadn’t seen any pleasure on his face,” Reba said. “So, of course, David’s father, Dennak, and I kept squeaking that toy for him, and our sport was to make him laugh. Eventually, there was also a movement we could do when holding him – bending him backwards in our laps – that would make him laugh hard. So, we’d do it repeatedly because we wanted to give him that pleasure.”

David experienced umbilical cord prolapse during his birth. His head compressed his cord depriving him of oxygen and resulting in significant brain damage and epilepsy. He had the voluntary ability to move only his eyes and sometimes lift-up his head. The Murphys would eventually receive a settlement for medical malpractice from the San Francisco hospital where he was born which would help fund David’s care for the rest of his 21 years. Recounting David’s traumatic April 1988 arrival “feels like it was yesterday,” Reba said. After his birth, doctors gave her vague information about David’s future, or worse, chastised her for asking too many questions.

When therapists Frances and Nell of Easterseals Bay Area – now called Easterseals Northern California – began working with David at three weeks old, it was Reba who needed their kindness as much, if not more, than David. They began providing speech/oral motor therapy and physical therapy. They also became essential to Reba’s mental health.

“Easterseals was absolutely crucial to our welfare and sanity because of Frances and Nell. They got us started, and they were just amazing and wonderful,” Reba said. “I don’t know how I would have survived without Easterseals at that point. It was my place to hold onto, where somebody understood and could help.”

Even after it became apparent that David would not meet ambitious therapy goals, Frances continued to work with him. After leaving the Easterseals infant and toddler program in San Francisco to set up her own practice in the East Bay, she visited and worked with him at his care home in Oakley, California. Reba knew David valued the comfort and interaction Frances provided.

The Murphys’ home in Oakland had only upstairs bedrooms and, as David got heavier, caring for him there, even just for weekends, became extremely difficult. As a result, they purchased a house in Placerville in 2000 that could accommodate David’s needs on one level while still allowing the family of four to be together under one roof. They would pick him up in Oakley and take him for family weekends in Placerville. The house’s open floor plan let David be part of all the goings-on from the comfort of the swiveling recliner the Murphys bought in preparation for his birth.

The home became known as “Camp David.”

“We also called it ‘Bayit David.’ We’re Jewish, and that means ‘Home of David.’ We had a wooden sign on the door carved in Hebrew with those words,” said Reba. “When the house sold, and I had the money, I felt like I needed to pay back.”

Reba sold the Placerville home last year and decided to honor David’s memory with proceeds from the sale. She immediately thought of Easterseals, who are now receiving $5,000 worth of iPads for adaptive communication devices. 

Communication with other parents is also important to Reba. She wants to continue supporting families with children like David because, she said, it is isolating to raise a child who does not develop. In her heart, she still wrestles with feelings of inadequacy: “I’m sure other mothers feel this way, that it is not possible to be a good enough mother,” she said, even though, in her head, she knows it’s not true.

While David did not meet developmental milestones, he loved to laugh. For those who loved him and looked after him, that was the real milestone – greater wellbeing for David and a sense from his family that there were moments of happiness.

Eventually, David had a hearty belly laugh that could be brought on by funny noises, or even by one of his special education teachers whose voice hit a particularly amusing octave. Reba remembers having a conversation with that teacher about her late son’s communication goals.

“This guy had a really funny voice,” Reba admitted. “David would laugh a lot at school when that teacher was talking. He told me that David understands more than I think, because he could tell a joke on one side of the room and David would crack up on the other side of the room. But I knew It was because of the sound of the teacher’s voice. David wasn’t understanding the joke.”

Reba is certain, though, that David had no doubts about who she was and the love she poured into him. She would hold him a specific way, tap rhythmically on his chest while singing The Song of Songs to him in Hebrew.

After soulfully singing ‘Ani l’dodi v’dodi li’ she said: “It means, ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’ He knew it was me, that I know. He absolutely knew who I was.”