JESSIE LOIS BOOK (BROWN)

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JESSIE LOIS BOOK (BROWN) August 9, 1919 - April 11, 2000 Small and frail in later life, she railed against all time that cut with thoughtless strokes her kin...and friends...and youth... at every ceaseless revolution; and hence, she fought the passing of her man with fury... and a knowing lack of comprehension. Blinded, not by cataracts which cruelly made the sun a cheerful painful blessing, but by her love of family, before her eyes unblemished, all... despite their cracks of character and form so evident to lesser, sightless beings. A product of apparent pride (derived from Great Depression years and losses from the War which scarred her folk and took away a swath of those she knew), she sheltered deep within a fear that life would suddenly remove... all that she cherished. Ally of the less endowed, she laboured for the causes of those wanting, but stoutly held that each should give his unrelenting best and slacking was... a thing...despised and never understood. In ways that placed a shade of sorrow neath her sometime golden smile, she felt the world: the battles fought and trials lost by even those she only knew from Broadcast News on every tolling hour. Her joys, she found, not in the foreign lands her travels touched, but close within her family, from near and far, and with her friends, with whom she shared both memories and prospects of this changing challenging planet. She left this place the way she wished, a thought upon her lips...cut short... by that same heart, so dominant throughout her life, exploding... and leaving naught...but peace...and union.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Apr 25, 2000