Maud Murphy of Brewster, formerly of Lexington, died on November 30, 2025.

Born in Meeng, Rockchapel, County Cork, Ireland, Maud was a graduate of St. Vincents Hospital and the Rotunda Hospital of Dublin. She emigrated to the United States in 1965 and worked for many years at Mass General and other local hospitals before moving into private duty nursing. Though she was an excellent clinician, nursing was a means to an end. The end, of course, was having fun.

And fun she had—and more of it she gave. Maud left a legacy of love and a long line of people who adored her. Chief among them is Larry Murphy, her husband of 59 years who loved Maud as gently and generously and devotedly as any person can love another, sitting beside her for hours at a time seven days a week for the past four years as her Alzheimer's advanced.

Maud was a champion of empowerment before that notion gained its popular currency. An exceptionally keen listener, she was a gifted healer, deeply intuitive, and offered rock-solid counsel. Many, many a person came away from a chat with Maud feeling uplifted, renewed, and newly capable. Though extremely pragmatic by nature, her greatest joy was seeing people soar. "Go for it," she'd tell you, no matter what cockamamie venture was at hand.

Survivors of some of those cockamamie ventures include her two children, Marie Glenn and her husband Daniel of Westwood, and Deirdre Martin and her husband Joseph of Kingston—whose lives she profoundly influenced and who view her as the model of how to parent and love. She leaves behind her dear siblings, Sister Joan of Knock, Co Mayo, Elizabeth "Bet" Dillon of Adare, Co Limerick, and Patrick Murphy and Jack Murphy, of Co Cork, Ireland, along with her late brother Monsignor Thomas Murphy of San Antonio, TX, and with a score of deeply loved nieces and nephews. Hoping to emulate their beloved grandmother are six grandchildren: Brendan, Evan, Aidan Glenn, and Jack, Carys, and Ava Martin.

Except for the occasional customer service representative, all who met Maud adored her. Whether cooking great big feasts, driving her grandkids hither and yon, entertaining family from all over, and swinging a racket in rounds of feisty non-regulation tennis play, Maud brought her incredible, infectious, generous joie de vivre to every encounter—and left people feeling cherished.

The funeral will start from the Douglas Funeral Home, 51 Worthen Rd., Lexington on Tuesday December 9th at 9am followed by a Mass of Christian burial at St. Brigid's Church, Lexington at 10am. Funeral Home Visiting Hours Monday from 4pm to 7pm. Relatives and friends are kindly invited. In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory may be made to the Women's Lunch Place. Interment at Westview Cemetery in Lexington.