Patricia Mary (Kiley) Murray, age 81, of Winchester, formerly of Arlington, passed away on September 24, 2020. She was the beloved wife of Hugh F. Murray Jr., who died earlier this year.
Pat was the youngest of five children, and grew up with her older sister Elaine, brothers Jack and Jim, and her “Irish Twin” sister and forever best friend Dorothy on Kimball Road in Arlington and on Monument Beach, Cape Cod. She attended Saint Agnes School, Matignon High School, and Regis College. Pat was an excellent student, especially gifted in mathematics, and after college she became a High School math teacher. She taught at Maynard High School for five years.
In 1964, she married Hugh Murray, with whom she had attended both Saint Agnes and Matignon. Pat and Hugh started their family in Arlington, moving to their first house on Virginia Road shortly after their first son, Hugh, was born. Steven and John followed in almost precise three-year intervals completing the family of five. In 1974, they moved to Winchester, where Pat and Hugh would live for the rest of their lives.
Pat’s adult life was spent caring about and taking care of others. She raised her three sons with energy, high expectations, strong support, pride, and deep love expressed through daily actions. She and Hugh shared a practical nature, and many evenings they would talk at the kitchen table until late hours about matters big and small. Hugh would often seek and (mostly) take her advice on thorny business issues. Pat was also the person to whom her parents, her siblings, her nieces, and her nephews turned when they were in need. She always found time to provide caring and practical support to friends and extended family, helping them during momentous times - illnesses and timely and untimely deaths of family members – and with the more mundane issues – helping an entire generation of Murray/Kiley/O’Neils pass high school or even college math, or stepping in to help make sure that her extended family members knew where they needed to be (sports practices, SATs, proms) and got there on time, prepared and looking presentable. Pat was always there, providing the help that her friends and family needed.
In the 1980s, Pat returned to teaching part time at Winchester High School. While her sons suspected this was merely an excuse to keep an eye on them, she truly loved the experience and the friends she made there.
Pat entered the next phase of her life with true delight. With the arrivals of Helena, George, Jack, Sam, Max, Amelia, and Quinn, Pat became Grandma. To a cadre of grandnieces and grandnephews, Aunt Pat was a surrogate Grandmother. She loved cuddling tiny babies and she spoiled toddlers in a way her sons did not recall being treated themselves. These years were filled with bowls of marshmallows for dinner, toys with electronic songs, giving young parents some respite from watching children, and providing occasional parenting advice to her daughters-in-law.
Having spent her life selflessly caring for others, God apparently thought that Pat needed to learn to let others care for her. She spent the last 10 years of her life in a slow transformation brought upon by fronto-temporal dementia. As the condition gradually stripped away the efficient reserve and sharp intellect that had characterized Pat for most of her life, it revealed other traits that had been hidden. At various times as the disease progressed, she liked to share some scandalous gossip that previously would not have even been acknowledged, swing on swings, play catch, and sing songs (ultimately one song, set to the tune of “Old MacDonald,” predominated). In this way, Pat taught Hugh to inhabit and embrace something new in his life, not by reasonably explaining to him that it might be good for him to do the laundry or plan and prepare the meals for a change, but simply by needing it to be done.
Pat was blessed during this time with family who supported her and Hugh, and with friends who accompanied her on her journey even as she was less recognizably the Pat that they had known. For the past three years, Pat was living in the memory care unit at Brightview Country Club Heights. Hugh visited several times every day until first the current pandemic and then his own illness prevented it. The staff there embraced both of them as part of their family, and provided Pat with a wonderful place to complete her life. In her last day, several staff member said it was clear that “Hugh is calling to her.”
Over her life, she was “Pat” to her friends, sometimes “Trish” to Dot and Dot’s friends, “Mum” or “Maps” to Hugh and their sons, “Aunt Pat” to her nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grandnephews, “Grandma” to her grandchildren, and “Patricia” while at Country Club Heights. We will miss her in all her manifestations.
Pat is survived by her sons and daughters-in-law: Hugh F. Murray III and his wife Nancy of West Hartford, CT; Steven Murray and his wife Gina of Andover, MA; and John Murray and his wife Stephanie of Winchester, MA. She was the delighted grandmother of Helena, George, Jack, Sam, Max, Amelia, and Quinn; the dear sister of Dorothy Coffey of Stamford, CT and Jack Kiley of Belmont, MA, the late James Kiley and the late Elaine O’Neil. Pat is also survived by her brothers-in-law Larry Murray and Gerry O’Neil, both of Winchester, MA and her sisters-in-law Rosemarie Murray of Lexington, Anne Murray of Winchester, and Marilyn Kiley of Belmont, and by many loving nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, cousins and friends.
Due to the precautions of the Covid-19 pandemic, funeral services are private. In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory be made to the Alzheimer’s Association and mailed to the National Processing Center, P.O. Box 96011, Washington, D.C. 20090-6011 or visit www.alz.org/manh.
The Zoom Link for relatives and friends to view the private Graveside Service on Wednesday, September 30 at 11AM is https://zoom.us/j/6484081921.