I say that the news was impossible because absolutely all my images of her are kinetic. Joanne no longer moving through our world with her trademark grace and signature style, giving off light in the form of smiles and laughter and an irrepressible love of life? Joanne of the generous gestures and funny observations, who somehow got more done before lunch every day than I could accomplish in a week – and did it all in no visible hurry and with every lovely curl in place – now permanently stilled? Joanne the good Christian woman who, like my mother, defined the term for me, with a goodness that was the very real thing, and emanated from her as naturally as everything else about her –
that Joanne, the victim of a cruel fate?
One of my favorite images of her is one I never personally saw, but I’ve heard about it, I can see it in my mind’s eye, and I love it because it so completely sums her up. When she was working in the library – running it, really, once Paden Hendrick, the library director, began wrestling with cancer — she liked to go out to the drugstore on hot summer afternoons and bring back ice cream cones for the staff. But in 100-degree weather it was a challenge to get these treats back to the library intact. I see her clearly: elegantly tall and slender, beautifully coiffed and dressed, probably in heels, balancing those cones and trying to keep them from dripping until she could get them to her colleagues – and laughing all the way.
That was Joanne. And the past tense comes hard.
I should add that in the end, when Paden was too ill to work, she had two jobs: she ran the library and looked after him, because he lived just up the street.
That was Joanne.
She and Jack, her husband of nearly 49 years, sat behind my parents in church every Sunday, and all I had to do was lean back a little in the pew to get a whispered “Good mornin’!” from her. It was like a little musical refrain, and she didn’t have to see me to know it made me smile.
Joanne will be missed and mourned all over town: in the Methodist Church, the library, the Lost Arts Club, her book group, and in the hearts of all who knew her — most especially her beloved and devoted husband, children and grandchildren. On the last day of her life, she delivered Meals on Wheels in the morning and headed to Kennesaw with Jack in the afternoon to visit her uncle in the hospital there. That was Joanne.
Her music was silenced too early, but in the notes that linger, she will always sound like what she always was: lovely and funny, swift-footed and sure to care for whoever or whatever needed caring-for; a devoted wife, mother, grandmother, relative, church member, volunteer worker, consoler, fun-loving friend, and all-around blithe spirit. Godspeed, Joanne.
Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.
