A friendship that goes back 30 years
It saddened me no end when I heard of the death of Swanthri on April 18. In the middle of the Coronovirus lockdown we couldn’t leave our house so I wasn’t able to even meet with her family and attend her funeral.
My friendship with Swanthri goes back over 30 years. When my husband Simon and I began attending the Cathedral of Christ the Living Saviour on Bauddhaloka Mawatha in the late 1980s there was a group of ladies who were involved with the work in the Cathedral. I well recall Muktha Wijesinha and Norma Tennakoon speaking to me and introducing me to this group.
From that point on, I joined them to make tea for our congregation – not such large numbers as now. We didn’t have a pantry so we used two rooms (which have been reconstructed to form the Cathedral offices) and we drew up a ‘roster’ of tea makers taking turns to do this work each Sunday after the service.
As time went on we had to work out a system on our own and Swanthri asked me to be her partner on the roster! Ever since, everything we were involved with in the Cathedral made us link up together. I was amazed at the number of committees Swanthri was on! I recall her and some others arranging the eats and drinks which were served at all the meetings where the congregation was involved, making palm crosses for Palm Sunday, organizing the offertory to the point where she used to have coloured ribbons allocated to each of the offertory helpers and matching colours strung up against the sides of the seats so that they could identify their correct line of seats in the church!
On every fifth Sunday the Cathedral had an English/Sinhala/Tamil combined service after which breakfast was served - Kiribath and the curries and sambols that went with it. We had a wonderful team of ladies who organized this – Swanthri included of course – and I was privileged to be one of the helpers! I constantly kept in touch with Swanthri regarding all these activities. She used to always come very early to church to check that everything was in order before the service.
We used to have a Church Sale once a year and the members of the congregation formed groups who undertook to run various stalls – from food and drinks, clothes etc., Marlyn Dissanayake and Swanthri asked me to join their stall, and together with Chitra and Rupa Simithriarachchi and Nalini Ellawala we ran a stall named ‘This, That and the Other’–collecting donations of all kinds of miscellaneous items from members of the congregation and our friends. We sorted them out into various ‘categories’, wrapped them up beautifully tied up with ribbons - the price pasted on each package! We had great fun and a close sense of friendship when we did all this – and of course managed to make a very profitable sale of these items!
Swanthri was also very talented and I loved getting her little boxes beautifully decorated with beadwork, which she used to do as a hobby! When I was the Editor for a few years of the Cathedral Bulletin, Swanthri was on my Committee and did all the proof reading. Sadly over the last year she was not keeping physically fit and very seldom came to Church. I used to call her often and try to visit her whenever she felt well enough to have visitors.
I miss my chats with her and seeing her in church. But I know that she is with the Lord and safe in His love and caring.
Anthea Senaratna