From the Morrill Memorial Library: The Company of a Book: Grieving a Loss

Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Company of a Book: Grieving a Loss

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. Read her entire article in this week's Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I write this column this week on the anniversary of the death of my own child 29 years ago. Coleen was a beautiful, deeply intelligent toddler nearing her second birthday when a congenital heart condition wrested her from our loving family. Simply put, it was one of life’s tragedies that I’ll always struggle with and one that has caused me to cherish her younger sisters all the more.

The experience of the death of a child has also formed an indelible bond between my second husband, Gerry, who suffered the same loss as I did not very many years ago, but before we met. Our daughters, in fact, share a birthday week with their birthdates only one day apart.

Who We Are

Since 2009, Library Director, Charlotte Canelli and over 30 other librarians and library staff at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts have been writing columns of approximately 1,000 words each week. These columns are published in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin in print and online on Wickedlocal.com. Over 535 columns are archived here on this blog.

In May 2015, and again in May 2017, the Library's submission to the Massachusetts Library Association Public Relations Awards won first place in the News category. A representative 24 columns were submitted for 2013-2014 and again in 2015-2016 for this biennial award. In May 2019, the Library's submission to the MLA Public Relations Awards won an Honorable Mention in the Print category.

Library Director Charlotte Canelli began writing a weekly column for the Daily News Transcript (now the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin) in February 2009. Other Morrill Memorial Library librarians in Norwood, Massachusetts soon joined her - writing guest columns at least once a year or once every eight weeks. The columns have been published weekly in Norwood Transcript and Bulletin and online at WickedLocal.com/Norwood for ten years. Spiral bound books of our columns are cataloged in the Morrill Memorial Library - one for each year. Over 520 columns are archived here. Visit the library website, www.norwoodlibrary.org for more information about the Morrill Memorial Library.