MaryJo

Mary Jo is part of my book club. As a group we have been together over 30 years. When I moved to Kankakee in '74 it took me several years to find other women like me (smart, irreverent, readers,etc). I must have joined book club in '76 and have planned my schedule around the second Thursday ever since.
Members have come and gone. Some have moved away, retired or not. A few have had to move because of their husband's job. The new members that replaced them came first as guests, getting a very informal unspoken ok to join from all the group so we have stayed at about 12-14 members for all this time.
Lots of us were teachers or former teachers (especially English teachers) and within the group is the subset of those who worked together in the Kankakee school system. Mary Jo is one of those; she finished her career as the #2 in administration.
MaryJo is the most vociferous reader of the group; we always marvel at the amount of reading she does. She is the expert on all that is happening in the literary world and we always want to read her selections.
Since she retired she has been the guiding force of the Friends of the Library on almost a full time schedule; she has been responsible for bringing well known authors to Kankakee and helping to put the new library in the center of life here.
Like most of us in book club she is a doting grandma...we have gone thru so many stages of life together. Raising little ones, struggling with teenagers, losing our own parents, going thru the "change", becoming grandmothers, retirement, major and minor illness. Of course we talk about the book! And so much more. We are, most of us, very good talkers and would never run out of topics.
MaryJo has been so vital to that process, being the reader and the talker she has been.

Now she lies in ICU still with tubes everywhere in a coma. The doctors say the stroke she had a week ago did massive damage to her brain. If she were to come out of the coma she would have no comprehension, could not speak, could not read, could not understand or recognize anyone. She left a living will....she would not want that existence.
I cannot imagine book club without her. Until now, I hadn't realized how much I cared about her. I wished I had told her that before last Saturday.