My name is Marilyn Helena Kelly. I was born on February 18, 1940. I lived in a loving and nurturing home with my parents and grandparents in Milton, Massachusetts. I attended St. Agatha’s Elementary School in Milton and Archbishop Williams High School in Braintree. Being half Italian and half Irish, the house was always filled with visiting family and friends. Every Sunday was big family dinner day. I was always in the kitchen helping my mother and grandmother cook. Helping out in the kitchen made me a pretty good cook too! I loved the outdoors and I loved music! I cried for days about Buddy Holly, (The Day The Music Died). I loved to ski, play basketball and tennis, and go horseback riding. I graduated from “Archies” in the iconic year of 1957. It was shortly after my graduation that my mom and dad gave me a brand new Corvair. It was a light blue four door and I loved driving it! I would drive my dad and grandfather to the train or all the way into town every morning to go to work. My parents urged me to enroll in college right away, but I wanted to wait. I enrolled in a few classes at Boston University, and since I was always good with numbers, I went to work in a bank. I met the man I would marry at a Christmas party in 1960. When you are in love and only 20 years old, you don’t see warning signs unless they are undeniable. I didn’t want to see the warning signs. We were married on February 11, 1961 at St. Agatha’s Church in Milton. We were on our way to our life together. Shortly after we were married, I became pregnant with my daughter, Jo’Anne. Physical abuse continued through my pregnancy. Jo’Anne was born on November 30, 1961. Once my husband turned the abuse onto our baby Jo’Anne, I left for good! Jo’Anne and I went home to live with my parents and grandparents. I got a restraining order and filed for divorce. I tried to put the pieces of my life back together and began to take classes at BU again. In the spring of 1962, I started a new job at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. On July 10, 1962, I finally agreed to meet him after he haunted me with phone calls in my new job all day. That was my mistake. My husband confessed to my murder later that evening. He took me away from my daughter before she was a year old.
My name is Jo’Anne; I am Marilyn’s daughter. I was legally adopted by my maternal grandparents and grew up with them and my great-grandparents in the same loving and nurturing home that my mother did. My mother’s murder destroyed two families. It left a tale of tragedy that has affected generations. People talk about closure, but it does not really exist. When someone is taken from you in a horrific and violent way, there can never be closure. There is only longing for them. My mother will be 22 years old forever. I like to think of all the things that my mother and I would have done together. We would take road trips in her Corvair. We would have gone to Woodstock together, the Newport Jazz Festival together, watched the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on the Ed Sullivan Show. She never saw the Beatles. She did not live long enough to go to Woodstock. She never saw Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. She missed the 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox. It is like Marilyn and I passed like two ships in the night, and we have to find one another once the fog lifts. I know I will see her again, and I know she is my guardian angel. I love her with all my heart and soul. So I try to focus on the positives and keep on going - that is all I can do until the day we are in each other’s arms again.
Posted July 2022