Pamela and David Murphy sit at a table in the dining room of their Manomet home. On the mantel, and above it, are photos and a striking pencil drawing of their son, Matt, including one with his dog, Willy. The gentle giant rottweiler died the year before Matt took his own life at age 20.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and the fifth anniversary of Matt’s death. The Murphys chose the sad milestone to talk about their son, and to encourage people to more openly discuss mental health.
“A lot of people suffer in silence because mental health is a stigma and they’re afraid to ask for help, and there’s so many people willing to help,” Pam, 52, says. “Ask for help.”
Like thousands of people who have lost a family member or friend to suicide, the Murphys say they did not realize Matt was having dark thoughts.
“We saw no signs of anything,” David, 56, says. “He went through the normal kind of teenage issues here and there, but he just never had a problem with relationships, with people. People loved him. He got up every day, loved what he did, loved his job.”
Matt was working as a carpenter and lived with parents. After work, his parents say, he often spent a few minutes at home before grabbing his fishing gear and heading out again.
“He had friends, and he enjoyed life,” Pam says.
The night before he his ended his life, Matt and his parents had been sitting around their fire pit, planning a ski trip to Colorado.
“Which makes us think there was no thought in his mind that night of what was going to happen the next day,” says David. “And this is why we’re trying to just understand what goes through someone’s head, where it’s just spontaneous.”
Coming to terms with the unthinkable tragedy was like unraveling a deep mystery. The family had a balanced and full life, David says. The Murphys say they supported their children in anything they wanted to do.
“We’re at every game, every practice,” David says.
The afternoon that Matt took his life, he had plans with his cousin. There was nothing out of the ordinary, his parents say.
Until there was.
“My nephew was calling me: ‘Where’s Matt?’” Pam recalls.
When he didn’t show up for dinner, it raised concerns, but no one was panicked.
“It wasn’t, ‘Oh, no, we have to go find him,’” Pam says. “It was, ‘He didn’t call me and now his steak’s getting cold and where is he?’”
Pam was slightly aggravated that Matt had not called to let her know he was going to be late. But as time passed, she noticed his truck was still in the driveway. She used a tracking app to find his phone. It was somewhere on their property. She worried that he might have fallen in the bog out back. They went to look, heard the phone pinging, and came upon his body.
Five years later, unanswered questions persist.
“What could we have done?” David says. “What could we have seen? And there was nothing we could point back to and go, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that now.’”
They even looked for clues in old pictures. They wonder if Matt’s expression in some of images indicates that he wasn’t having a good day.
“The only thing I can chalk it up to is that he was suffering in silence,” Pam says.
The Murphys have set up the Matthew Murphy Toolship Fund in his memory – it’s for Plymouth high school seniors contemplating a career in the trades. It’s not a scholarship, but an award of $500 so that they can buy their own tools.
That was the track Matt was on, David says. College didn’t interest him.
“He loved working with his hands,” he says.
Matt excelled in the technical education program at Plymouth North High School, from which he graduated in 2017, but did not have a sense of his own excellence, according to his parents.
“He always felt second class or diminished,” David says. “We were always told when we met with his teachers [that] he had this great potential, but he never really heard it or knew it.”
The Murphys say that with the toolship fund they are not seeking to reward top students. They want the annual award to go to those with potential who need self-esteem boost. There are lots of recognition opportunities for students headed to college, David says, but not many for tech students.
In high school, Matt’s two brothers, Sean, 27, and Mitchell, 22, were college bound. Pam says she saw how the schools treated them differently.
Four years ago, they started handing out the award at Plymouth North and Plymouth South. They initially chose four students, but last year expanded the stipends to six.
The Murphys have been working with David South, a teacher in the Plymouth North tech program who helps select the students. South’s daughter was one of the Plymouth police officers who responded the day Matt died.
Ultimately, they would like to connect students with employers and the training they need to qualify for jobs.
“There’s a lot of students that are graduating from tech programs and are interested in a trade and they just don’t know what the next step is,” says David.
To raise funds for the toolship fund, the Murphys are holding a cornhole tournament on Oct. 12 at the John Alden Sportsman’s Club in Manomet. There will be a band and food. There is no charge to get in – contributions are voluntary.
They hope that the event encourages people to look for signs of suicide, and to ask for help.
“We’re going to struggle the rest of our lives with this,” David says.
For more information about the Matthew Murphy Toolship Fund – including the upcoming fundraiser – email mattmurphytoolship@gmail.com.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.