Elise van der Meer

Elise van der Meer — Liesje, to anyone who knew her after 1953 — was a librarian, a cellist, a steady hand at every kitchen sink in her family. She died at home on a Friday afternoon, the windows open, her sister beside her, a cup of tea getting cold on the windowsill. She was seventy-seven.

She was born in Haarlem in the spring of 1947, the eldest of three. Her parents had survived something they did not name in their children’s presence, and so Elise grew up with a particular kind of attention — for what was said and what was carefully left out. She brought that attention into every room she entered for the rest of her life.

She trained as a librarian in Amsterdam, and joined the children’s wing of the Velsen public library in 1971. She stayed for thirty years. There are now adults in three countries who learned to read in her chair, who remember a particular voice, a particular way of turning a page. She insisted that no child be hurried.

She married Aafke Visser in 2002, the spring after it became possible, in the same town hall where Elise’s parents had been married fifty-three years before. They lived in a narrow house on the Kerkstraat with too many books and a cat named Joop, and later a cat named Joop, and later a cat named Joop again.

She kept a cello in the corner of every house she lived in. She did not always play it. She liked the company of the instrument.

Elise is survived by her wife Aafke; by her sisters Geertje and Saskia; by a wide circle of nieces, nephews, neighbors, and former four-year-olds. A service will be held on Sunday, 18 May, with a reception following at the house — bring something to eat, if you’d like, and a book to leave on the shelf.