Tuesday, July 20, 2010

In Remembrance

It is with great sorrow that we mourn the loss of Jayne Sullivan, a charter member of the Brunswick Community Library, a Friend of the Library, a library volunteer.

I met Jayne in 2005, when the Board of Trustees held an open house to welcome my tenure as the new director. She was wearing a knitted vest, very smart, and I asked if she had knitted it herself--she had, and we immediately bonded around our love of knitting. It was one of her many talents.

Through the years I also came to know Jayne as an avid reader--I think she checked out almost every  large print book we had, as soon as it came in. I loved hearing her stories about her travels, she had been to all fifty states, and much of the world. A few years ago she cruised on a small boat down the Amazon river.

On the last day of her life, Jayne drove her car to the library, from her apartment, and enjoyed a lunch of coq au vin with the Book and Movie group, as they discussed "Julie and Julia". She was 87 years old.

Virginia Woolf  had this to say about readers, on their way to heaven:

When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards—their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble—the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading." 

Jayne, we were lucky to know you.  You are missed.





 

2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for writing this, it's a beautiful tribute to my grandmother. I am half chuckling and half sobbing, thinking about last Thursday when I had a conversation with her and she asked me to explain "blogging" to her. :) Thank you again, I wish I had more words to express how much this means to me. Tracy

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  2. It is no small comfort for those of us who loved Jayne to know that her last moments were spent with her beloved book group, among her fellow Friends Of The Library. It is exactly the way she would have wanted it, keeping busy with the business of living right up until the end!!! Yes, thank you for the lovely tribute to our funny, thoughtful, and inspirational aunt!

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