“I’ll finally get to see Marilyn again,” were Joe DiMaggio’s last words, claims the New York Post. Such was his love for the iconic beauty, Marilyn Monroe, that he could never abandon her, even after her tragic demise. He kept sending roses to her grave a few times a week until he ԁıеԁ because she once asked him to send her roses forever.
Marilyn Monroe and her second husband Joe DiMaggio had the kind of forbidden love story that people only read about in books but some were fortunate enough to witness it back in the day. The whole world stood up and took notice when a popular athlete of the New York Yankees and the Hollywood heartthrob started dating in the 1950s.
At first, Marilyn didn’t want to meet DiMaggio, thinking that he was a stereotypical arrogant athlete. But her opinion changed with time and they eloped to exchange vows at the San Francisco City Hall on 14 January 1954, The Vintage News reports.
According to PBS, Jerry Coleman, one of Joe DiMaggio’s Yankee teammates said, “I don’t think it was a surprise at all. The greatest woman in the world and the greatest guy in the world. It was a perfect match,” he added.
However, the “perfect match” could not carry on as a married couple and broke up within a year. It’s from then that their love story really began. Perhaps that’s the thing with star-crossed lovers, you can’t cage them in societal norms and labels. Their love for each other grows and becomes eternal only when there are no damaging distractions.
Although, the reason for their breakup wasn’t poetic. Apparently, DiMaggio was a possessive husband. As per her biographer Donald Spoto, he didn’t even want her to shoot the iconic scene in the white dress standing on a subway gate for The Seven Year Itch. They parted ways soon after because their worldviews were so different.
But a failed marriage did not change their dynamics. In fact, when Monroe once fell sick shortly after the divorce, DiMaggio was by her side. He was the one who rushed to her side in February 1961 when she was forcibly institutionalized. When she was released in his care she called him “my hero.”
Years passed and they came close again, Monroe’s “hero” wanted to marry her again but she would leave the world before that could happen. Despite choosing different lives, they remained friends and Marilyn had once said that she would have ԁıеԁ a long time ago if not for him. “If it weren’t for Joe, I’d probably have killed myself years ago,” Marilyn Monroe told a friend before passing away in 1962, reported New York Post.
In 1962, when she was found ԁеаԁ in her apartment, with no one as her family, it was DiMaggio again who flew from New York to LA, identified her body, and had a small, private funeral for her. As per the Independent, he designed her headstone and was totally distraught and inconsolable at the funeral.
He was heard whispering “I love you, I love you” almost like a sigh of regret and guilt. The woman he loved so much was gone forever. But he kept one promise that he had made to her years ago. She had once asked him to send her roses every week, forever and he carried on that responsibility until he ԁıеԁ in 1999.
She had said, “Six fresh long-stemmed red roses, three times a week … forever.”
Her ԁеаtһ broke him emotionally. “I’ll go to the grave regretting and blaming myself for what happened to her,” Joe DiMaggio told Dr. Rock Positano, according to the book, Dinner with DiMaggio: Memories of an American Hero that he co-authored, as reported by People. “[Frank] Sinatra told me later that ‘Marilyn loved me anyway, to the end.’”
Marilyn Monroe’s memories were the one constant thing in his life and even when he ԁıеԁ it was her in his mind. His last words are so hard-hitting that one could almost believe that the love story that remained forbidden in this life due to worldly elements, will come its full circle when they meet on the other side and never part.
When he lay there on his ԁеаtһ bed counting his last minutes, he whispered, “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn again.”