Leah McCann Smith | Writer & Editor

It’s a somber week as we mourn the recent loss of our Kelly Johnson, my company’s accountant extraordinaire — but first, and most importantly, a wife, grandmother, friend and mother.

Kelly was our company mama bird. With Kelly in your nest, everything felt warm and safe. We were all Kelly’s baby birds, learning how to fly and be the adult birds she knew we could be. BU’s College of Engineering says, “Slowly the mother bird will stand farther and farther away from the nest, forcing the baby bird to come out of the nest in order to get food.”

Like birds, there are beings in this world that emit light and calm. As far as humans go, these are some of the best people you can find, and everybody knows it. You want these people in your life. Like the mama bird I knew her to be, Kelly Johnson so accurately fit into this description, it’s not even funny. We can try our best to put together words and phrases to describe Kelly and her impact on this world. But to think words and phrases could even come close to embodying her light is merely my selfish hope in attaining catharsis.

Kelly had just passed her five-year milestone of beating breast cancer. To have lost her to COVID-19 feels sick, twisted and so incredibly unfair.

So, folks, in order to have an opinion, you have to get a bit political.

It wasn’t Kelly’s choice to leave us this week. But it can be your choice to respect the hard work of everyone in this world fighting the coronavirus — and you — YOU, no one else — get to choose if and how you protect yourself and others from it.

A simple black ribbon with the name “Kelly” digitally etched onto it is displayed on our website today, locked at the bottom-left of the page no matter where you scroll — up, down, left, right. The locked ribbon symbolizes the belief that Kelly will forever be with us.

What happens when mama bird flies away? “Only with practice do they learn the ropes and develop the muscles necessary to flap their wings to their fullest potential.” While I know she would want this for all of us, I (and I trust everyone else at rAVe) will have a really tough time getting out of the nest without our Kelly Johnson.