Carol Masiuk Sokolowski, of Marshfield, was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1940 to Stacia and Julian Masiuk. She died peacefully at home on September 20, 2019 at the age of 78 due to complications of lymphoma.

In Hartford, Carol attended St. Augustine's Grammar School and Mount St. Joseph's Academy. She also graduated cum laude in 1962 from Regis College. She earned her Master's Degree in English in 1963 from Tufts University, where she wrote her thesis on the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Carol taught English for one year at Bridgeport University and was a professor for over 30 years at Massasoit Community College in Brockton. She has also published a book of poems, Swan Song.

At Massasoit, Carol helped to develop an Honors Program, taught online courses in the early days of the internet. She especially enjoyed engaging in Gilbert and Sullivan productions, where her design of the "dragon" was a special hit of The Mikado. She also sang in local choirs and was a soloist at St. Christine's Church in the 1970's and 1980's. She has been a Marshfield resident since 1968 and enjoyed time at her family cabin in Vermont.

Carol is survived by her loving husband Edward of 55 years and their five children: Hilary (Stavros), Julianna (Leonard), Edward III, Alexander (Irina) and Gabriel (Nancy). Also surviving are their nine grandchildren, Kayla, Sophia, Jason, Stella, Anya, Maria, Alexandra, Stephen and Gabriella.

Visiting hours will be held at the MacDonald Funeral Home, 1755 Ocean Street in Marshfield on Thursday, September 26, 2019 from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Friday, September 27, 2019 at 10:30 a.m. in St. Christine's Parish Church, 1295 Main Street in Marshfield. Interment will be in the Couch Cemetery.

Carol's poems celebrated her love for her family and, as she wrote, "things gratifying to the ear", and we want to share some of these with you here:

At Seventy-five

I am a counter
by obsession
Whenever there are
three or more
in a group
I must count them,
assign each a
number –
Even if I know numbers
are not real,
but fictitious names
to identify grouped
objects,
3 blind mice
4 and 20 black
Birds
5 gold rings
7 seas that run high
Make-believe numbers
But so helpful to us
with minds wide
open.
Lord, will there be room
for me
in heaven's
numbers?
Carol Sokolowski, October 23 and 24, 2015

Second Soprano

Lord, if I die, as we both know I will,
Will you please remember, if you need singers in your choir,
Or at least in any of your choirs, that I am a decent 2nd soprano,
Or at least I am once I have learned the music – or if I have a strong 2nd soprano standing close to me.
I could fill in.
It isn't the voice you could ask to sing a solo, but all my life, at least from 5th Grade,
I have learned to harmonize.
And you know it isn't easy, when all around you,
You hear the melody line, it is so tempting to join in.
But there are some of us who won't;
Although on our own, our music sounds head-less,
It provides a harmony that gratifies the ear.

So, Lord, if you look at me and wonder, "Yes" or "No", just remember
Second Soprano.
Not just an Alto from a four-line choir,
But could be, maybe an eight.
-Oh, but once, and never, never again –
He had me sing straight soprano, and I turned bright red.
I have been in enough choirs where second strained to be first – to know these are not my places.
But I can fill in the harmony line,
Happily, and mostly reliably.
Carol Sokolowski

High Summer

We had not thought it was Summer's last stroke….
The lake that day had caught the sun
And seemed it would hold it a week or three
Not that Fall would push in, and the chill at night
Would be stronger than August's warm could be

We had not thought it was Summer's last stroke
We should have known when the lake that day
Was as kind as the air that slid over our skin
And no breeze stirred the too green trees
Too green for a red leaf to thrust its way in

We had not thought it was Summer's last stroke
High Summer, we called it, with blinkers on.
Though the day lilies' ghosts kept whispering "never."
We drank golden tea to forget what we knew.
And dreamt that it all could go on forever.

Halloween: Turning Fifty

First recognition cuts deepest:
The sight of the sword alone can pierce the heart.

The day of my birth is chased by the Day of Bones
And I hang on my door the dancing death of the season –
Memento mori, sings my church of the Ages,
But I don't need the skeletal shapes to remember

That my father is bones,
my brother is bones,
and oh, my mother
my mother is bones,
Wrapped in the earth of Connecticut
Not cold, but warm, in the clay red soil of the valley of the river.

I remember,
I remember,
The first inkling glance at Conclusion,
That could come so bitter to one who had felt so eternal –
And again, with a thrust,
and again, with the cruel whittler's
knife that would carve all the flesh
from their bones,
until now they are bones –

As I am, too, inside.

Skeletons dance on my door this eve of All Saints.
They grin and they kick up their heels and they smile at the pumpkins,
Those globes of the Harvest, counterweights of my fifty-year scale.
At least I hope they smile.

And I get used to it.

Grandparents Die in May

Grandparents die in May
when papers are due,
and exams are scheduled.

Four died, once, in a single class I was teaching,
reported one by one by students with sad faces,
needing extensions.

The first I felt sorry for
The second gave me pause -
By the fourth, I mentally rolled my eyes and said "whatever."
A gift of time must be fairly meted out.

But what if a grandmother really died,
and the grandchild's tears were real?

My father died in May
while my children were still babies

Sometimes I suspect my students knew