Last week, before an audience of some 50 people at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, I had the chance to talk about aging with theologian Harvey Cox. Now age 73, Cox has established a wide reputation as teacher, writer, and spiritual leader. Our conversation demonstrated once again why he is so highly regarded by his own students and other people interested in religious issues.

My first question wondered how my friend’s spiritual life has changed over the years. Some of the answer I already knew because Professor Cox, in his most recent book “Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey Through the Jewish Year,” tells of the joy he has found through sharing in the Jewish tradition of his wife and teenage son.

When younger, he felt suspicious of the external marks of religion, but now he has come to appreciate the “tangible signs of the spiritual realm.” The Jewish faith, based on a calendar of events rather than a creed, now speaks to him. So does the Mezuzah that now hangs on the door of his house. “Thank God, I’m home,” he says to himself as he touches this object on arriving back from a hard day of work.

My second inquiry raised a difficult question, even for a theologian. I asked my friend how his ideas about God have changed. In response he said: “When I was younger, I thought I knew a lot more about God than I do now.” This theologian went on to explain how he learned from his teacher at Harvard Divinity School, Paul Tillich, that the biggest mistake is to take religious images literally. God remains beyond all imagery, even Tillich’s famous description of God as “the ground of being.”

I next asked Cox how he responds to the “small insults” of later life, the pains and other sufferings one encounters along the way. He calls them “a drag,” and often feels resentful of them. But when, because of eye surgery, he had to lie on his stomach for two weeks, he experienced warm feelings stirred by friends coming by to talk with him and offer their support.

About new sources of creativity in later life, Cox feels convinced of their power to preserve the health of our brains. He recommends doing something that “has not been part of your repertory,” such things as writing poetry or taking up a new language. This latter is what he is doing as he studies Islam and tries to learn some Arabic.

My question about meditation and contemplation evoked some more of Cox’s spiritual history. Decades ago he felt drawn to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and especially its practice of contemplative practice. The person assigned to teach him meditation was Allen Ginsburg, the famous Beat poet, whom Cox calls “a terrible teacher.”

In time, he was referred to the Benedictines and, for years, has made it a point to stay twice a year at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, making his own retreats. Another vital element in Cox’s spiritual practice is his family’s weekly observance of the Sabbath. Starting on Friday evening, he shuts off the computer and abstains from doing any business through Saturday. In this weekly practice he finds great spiritual value.

A member of the audience asked our guest about “the next thing” –  – what is likely to be most significant in the near future. Cox believes it may be religious diversity, now all around us. He cited the answer given by one of his undergraduate students from whom he had asked his reasons for taking a course in world religions. “My roommate is a Muslim, my chemistry partner is Jewish, my girl friend is Buddhist,” the student repied.

Another person asked about the connection between science and spirituality. In response, Professor Cox shared what he learned from the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould when they taught a course together. “I’m grateful for what science has done because it has made religion more honest,” he replied. The other main impact of science has been to raise questions that science itself is incapable of answering, moral issues that confront everyone.

A woman sought more details about the pilgrimage that Cox had referred to earlier. He then told of visiting the South where he had been active in the 1960s in the struggle for civil rights. Traveling with his 16-year-old son, Cox wanted to introduce the boy to a part of American history that looms large in his own life also. As he showed his son the jail in North Carolina where he was held for a few days, the excitement of that time came back. He looks back with some longing to an era in our history when people were empowered to fight for something vitally important.

This pilgrimage struck me as a fine response to an question many older people ask themselves: How can I pass on to my children and grandchildren my legacy of precious personal experience?

Anyone inclined to judge theologians out of touch with real life has obviously never talked with Harvey Cox.

Richard Griffin

In my personal files there is a postcard that I count as a precious possession. It was sent from Rome by my father in March 1939 to my mother at home in Watertown. The message did not go beyond the conventional: a few words about the weather and looking forward to the trip back to Boston. Nonetheless, for me it holds historical meaning.

My father had traveled to Rome in order to cover the election of a new pope. The election qualified as big news, especially in Catholic Boston. But getting there had also been a matter of widespread interest to readers of the Boston Post, the large newspaper which employed my father as a reporter.

The story of getting there centered on the archbishop of Boston, William Cardinal O’Connell (often referred to as “Gangplank Bill,” for his frequent vacations by ship). Twice before, in 1914 and 1922, he had failed to reach Rome on time for the elections of popes Benedict XV and Pius XI, so he was especially anxious not to miss this one.

He wanted to arrive at the Vatican before the group of 62 cardinal electors was sealed behind closed doors. The only passage then available, in those days before commercial air travel had become common, was on a ship of the Italian line, the Saturnia, sailing out of New York.

Two weeks after leaving North America, the Saturnia reached Algiers where the cardinal and his party transferred to another Italian ship, the Vulcania. This liner arrived at Naples, two days later, enabling O’Connell to reach Rome on March 1 just in time. Each day from shipboard my father would dispatch a cable back to his paper in Boston detailing the cardinal’s passage and informing readers about the suspenseful chances of beating the Vatican deadline.

Later, O’Connell narrated these events in a privately printed book entitled “A Memorable Voyage.” There he simply refers to Mr.Griffin and his colleagues from two other Boston newspapers as “genial correspondents.” About the papal election itself, he supplies only some ceremonial details, leaving out anything about the actual deliberations.

The choice of the successor to Pius XI would come as no surprise to readers of the Boston Post. By virtue of an extensive tour of the United States in 1936, this Vatican insider was well known to the American cardinals, other clergy, and the American public as papabilis (pope-able.)

This election of Pacelli would prove fateful. The outbreak of World War II a few months later ensured the importance to the world of this new pope. In particular, his stance toward the Jews in their hour of mortal peril would become highly controversial and remains so to this day. Pius XII, as he became known, still has his determined critics for his alleged failure to speak out and act forcefully to save the European Jews from destruction, but he also has his defenders.

Though I appreciate having the postcard in my files, seeing it also causes me some pain. It serves, after all, as a reminder of an important personal fact: I never once asked my father about his experiences traveling with Cardinal O’Connell and covering the election of Pius XII.

True, I was only eleven years old when my father went on that historic trip. My not having then talked with him about his adventures does not surprise me. But that I never did any time afterward now seems to me astonishing. My father was witness to other dramatic historical events but I never got to hear from his lips anything of them either.

As time went on, and I entered into my teenage years, World War II fascinated me. I followed the battles and other military news every day and was rabidly interested in the progress of Allied forces. News about the Catholic Church also became important to me as I grew older. Still, I did not ever ask my father about his impressions of Pacelli or his appraisal of the church’s stance toward the two warring sides.

Perhaps there is something providential about young people not being able to talk to their parents or even to listen with interest to their parents’ experiences. Maybe they would not mature as distinct personalities if events in their elders’ lives impinged too strongly on them. In any event, I could not rise above my own narcissistic self enough to take in what my father could have told me of his life.

At age 21 I was to leave home and the world in search of God. That leaving would deprived me of the opportunity to talk with my father, adult to adult. And when I was only 25, my father died.

I often fantasize about talking with him at my present age. Now I could ask him about that fateful papal election and about many of the other significant events he wrote about as a journalist. Maybe I could listen now with the understanding and sympathy that age has brought.

Richard Griffin

Sometimes, in later life, the simplest activities bring the most pleasure. An early morning walk on a crisp fall Sunday, for example, delivers satisfactions for both body and soul.

I pass through my front gate just after seven, the only householder to be up and out. All the neighbors are still sleeping, it seems, their cars keeping vigil for them on the street. On one bumper, scrunched together, several weighty slogans catch my eye: “Stay Human.” “Question Assumptions.” “Save Tibet.”

The first hours of the new day have a clarity about them unique to 7 A.M in early October. As I walk, the sun’s rays slant across the streetscapes, illuminating everything in sight. Each object emerges sharp in the light, with borders clearly etched. Subtle shadows shade parts of buildings, providing a delicious chiaroscuro in black and white.

The color blue holds total command of the sky, the way it will almost surely not by afternoon. No clouds yet dare spoil the splendor of the world above, a purity I want to hold on to.

Morning has broken, as the folk singer once called Cat Stevens used to sing. The world does indeed look like a new creation, fresh from the Creator’s hand. Even things made by humans look renewed in this hour.

As I follow my accustomed path through parts of the neighboring university, its structures stand out eloquently. Two rhinos, formidably sculptured in tarnished bronze, stand stolidly at the entrance to the biological labs.  

The multi-storied psychology building, soars in white stone far above my head, a temple to pure reason. The museums that I pass mix light and dark in unaccustomed formulas. Off to my right, the slender spire of the college church, sparkling white, reaches for the sky.

As well as sights, my route offers delicious sounds. Not yet ready for songs, the birds chirp to one another and, perhaps, to me. They almost have the field to themselves, the usual noisemakers – cars – being few at this early hour.

Nor does human chatter distract me since few people have yet appeared, no cell phones either. And, thank heaven, no one drives by with his car radio blaring rap.

Passersby, if any show up, may greet me now more than at other times. We walkers are few enough to appreciate the wonder of other human beings’ existence. It’s almost as if we were alone in the big world and free to be amazed that additional persons also inhabit this place.

Students nearby in their thousands will sleep for hours more, with no regrets for missing the best part of the day. Instead they have cheerfully reversed the order of nature, turning day into night and night into day. When they greet one another with the words “What’s up?” as they invariably do, the answer must be: “Not me, at this hour.”

I relish the silence and feel grateful for interior space and reflection. Musing about the week, I cherish the hospitality of former colleagues, two nights before. Also thoughts about faith from Anne Lamott, a quirky author newly discovered, amuse and inspire me. And columnist Tom Friedman’s views of America’s future stir me to wondering where we are heading as a nation.

But thinking takes second place to feeling. Now is a time to swing one’s arms, as I do, and set a brisk pace. Inner peace, punctuated by moments of elation, powers my walk. Sunday is my favorite day of the week, the day when I practice leisure.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was right in finding the beauty of the Sabbath precious, and Huston Smith in lamenting its loss in the modern world.

I look forward to worship at the end of my walk. Then I will join with others, old and young, in rites familiar to me since childhood. Reciting the ancient texts will bring to my spirit the peace and joy stirred up by sacred words and mystical thoughts.

Even when the liturgy feels perfunctory, as it will today, and the celebrant’s style casual, even slapdash, I will have started the day right. Though this preacher knows no more than I when or how his sermon will end, God will have provided.

This day will bring further welcome events. Another meeting with members of the faith community, this time over coffee and cake; my weekly softball game with its never-failing joy of friendly competition ; a televised slice of the Patriots’ game from Miami; a reception for fellow writers who have published new books this past year; and a delicious dinner with family members.

The walk indeed turns out to have been the start of a fine day. Typical of Sundays spent in my 75th year to heaven, this one may not have had everything but it had a whole lot. The beauty of the world, physical and spiritual exercise, community, family – is it the passage of years that makes these goods feel more precious than ever before?

Richard Griffin

In this season’s first episode of NYPD Blue, a television series of which I have been an off-and-on fan, a woman in her 80s is carried out of her apartment building on a stretcher. She has been assaulted by a young man whose brutal crime disgusts even hardened police detectives. The brief sight one gets of her is upsetting: she is covered with bloody bruises and looks comatose.

This scene, with its evidence of a terrible attack on a defenseless old woman, has reminded me how widespread elder abuse has become. I find the subject painful even to contemplate, the reason why I have not written about it before now. But a talk given last month at a week-long seminar for journalists has raised my consciousness of how a great many older Americans suffer abuse at the hands of other people and the need for the public to become aware of it.

The seminar speaker was Robert Blancato, who now serves as president of the National Committee to Prevent Elder Abuse. He knows the way Congress works because, for more than ten years, he staffed the House Select Committee on Aging.

In testimony to the U. S. Senate, Bob Blancato put the number of elder abuse cases nationwide at almost 500 thousand. Of these, 15 thousand were alleged to have taken place in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. But these are only the reported cases; he estimates that the total number could be five million, because eight out of every ten instances go unreported.

Blancato supports the “Elder Justice” legislative proposal introduced by Senator Breaux that would strengthen and reorganize federal efforts to fight abuse. This proposal aims at establishing dual offices of Elder Justice, one at Health and Human Services, the other at the Department of Justice. These offices would coordinate efforts on various governmental levels and also strengthen protective services around the country.

Most elder abuse – physical, sexual, emotional/psychological – comes from family members, many of them caregivers of the person abused. Financial exploitation, neglect, and abandonment are other common forms of offenses against older people.

Women are more likely to be mistreated than men. Those with ailments like Alzheimer’s disease that make them more vulnerable, suffer more abuse than others. Spouses who have had a history of struggling with their partners for domination by violence, threats, or other tactics may turn to other forms of abuse.  Experts describe many such cases in the phrase “domestic violence grown old.”

In Massachusetts we are fortunate to have an effective protective services network with more than two decades’ experience. Among its features is a legal requirement for doctors, nurses, social workers and other professionals in the medical and helping fields to report evidence of elder abuse.

The easiest way for anyone to get help is to contact the state office responsible for elder services at a hotline open 24 hours, seven days a week: 1 800 922-2275. But you can also call your regional home care agency (known as an ASAP – “Aging Service Access Point”) or local council on aging. The social workers who respond to requests for help I have found to be caring and sensitive in emotionally complicated situations.

One such protective services social worker to whom I talked for this column is Gavin Malcolm of Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services. In responding to instances of abuse by family members, he and his colleagues exercise prudence. “We try to utilize the least restrictive intervention possible,” he says. Each scenario is different and requires sensitivity.

Often, the pressures leading to abuse can be much relieved by providing additional support to the family caregiver, Malcolm explains. Often the latter does not know about adult day care centers, for example, or assisted living alternatives. Helping a spouse or other family member connect with outside assistance can improve the situation greatly.

It is rare, Malcolm reports, to find the abuser sadistic. Much more likely  are cases like those in which the adult son or daughter of an elderly father with Alzheimer’s punches the elder, pushes him down, or threatens him with nursing home placement. Obviously, in a situation like that, the caregiver may be suffering an overload of stress and need help rather than condemnation.

Adam Kramer, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Elder Affairs, agrees with national experts in saying “clearly elder abuse is an underreported crime.” He shared with me two of his agency’s new programs designed to detect financial exploitation, a form of abuse that the protective service network has become more aware of lately.

The first program is a bank reporting project whereby tellers are trained to recognize efforts to take advantage of an elder’s money. Suspicious signs include unusually large withdrawals or special nervousness on the part of a companion.

The other is a money management program that can help forestall chaos in elders’ finances making them an easy target for chicanery.

If how we treat our elders is one gauge of a healthy society, then protecting them against abuse surely deserves high priority.

Richard Griffin

“We have to respect him – he’s our grandfather,” says a teenage boy named Nick. And Brittany, his younger sister, fighting back tears, adds: “I’m just happy he’s alive.”

The grandfather, Arthur Block, is fortunate to receive care from his daughter, Ethelinn, and other members of his extended family. That makes it possible for him stay at home despite the dementia from which he suffers.

Ethelinn talks gently with her father, explaining to him how he forgets. When he asks for an example, she says: “Sometimes you forget mom died.” His reply must have astonished her: “Maybe I want to.”

These people are among many caregivers and their loved ones featured in “And Thou Shalt Honor,” a documentary to be shown next week on public television. Channel 2 in Boston plans to run it first on Wednesday, October 9, at 9 p.m., with several repeats on Channel 44. The program’s portrayal of older and younger people and their caregivers struck me for its human beauty and often brought me close to tears.

Joe Mantegna, the middle aged actor, serves as the program’s host. He introduces himself as a caregiver, like every one in four of Americans. He adds: “Our generation is the first that has more parents to care for than children.”

But parents are not the only ones in need of care. I will not soon forget William and Marisol Deutsch, a relatively young couple who, with exuberant feeling, celebrated their marriage on a yacht off the island of Jamaica only one-and-a-half years before. When we see them, he, a physician, has been discovered to have early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Of her dear husband, Marisol says: “It’s hard to see the person you love not functioning the way they should.”

It is affecting to see Gerry Cohen, age 83, of Los Angeles taking care of his incapacitated wife. Of her he says, “I love her more now” and adds, “I want her at home, giving her the best of care at home.” And, in response, speaking haltingly, she says, “I think he’s the greatest thing on earth.”

Professional caregivers also appear in this program, fortunately because the public needs to know how shockingly low are the wages they receive for often extremely difficult work. Many of them are women of color, scraping by in the effort to survive financially.

Mary Ann Wadley, a nurse’s aide, has worked in a nursing home for 28 years for pay that she calls “terrible.” She says about her work: “We do things that nobody else is going to want to do.”

A home health worker in New York, Gail Sims, reports of the people she visits: “There are a lot of them that will abuse you.” But that does not stop her from cherishing them. Nor does it stop Mary Ann Wadley from caring for her patients: “Sometimes you love the bad ones,” says this heroic black woman, “because you can’t help it.”

Ms. Wadley also has been the only person present when patients die. Of one woman, she says: “I held her hand for two hours, tears running down my face.” And she repeats as if it were a mantra: “I’m a care giver.”

Mary Ann Nation of Franklin, Ohio, is another family caregiver. Her husband, when well, used to be rather unresponsive to her and their marriage was cold. But, through helping him survive each day in his disability, she says: “I have learned more about him in the past two years than in the previous 33.”

Mary Ann recognizes that she cannot prevent her husband from dying but, she affirms, “I can make the days of his life better.” Like many others she says of institutional care: “Putting him in a nursing home is not an option.”

To Dr. William Thomas, creator of the “Eden Alternative,” nursing homes are the enemy. “My whole passion is pulling the plug on nursing homes,” he says. About the long term care system in general, he uses graphic imagery: “It makes me want to throw up.”

For his institutional reform, he has four principles: 1. Treat the staff the way you want them to treat the elders; 2. Bring back decision-making to the elders; 3. Bring children and animals into these residences and grow gardens; 4. Develop a commitment to the ongoing growth of the people.

Thus far, he claims, 237 nursing homes have adopted his Eden Alternative.

Many other people in this television documentary display beautiful tenderness toward the people they care for. Everyone admits it’s difficult and sometimes they feel close to the breaking point. But it’s heartwarming to see so much caring and love in action across this country.

Most caregivers would not use the religious language of Rev.Lois Knutson, a Lutheran pastor in Minnesota, but hers words capture some of the spirit behind their loving actions. “I feel honored to be invited on to the holy ground of people’s lives,” she says of her ministry to elders.

“And Thou Shalt Honor” itself does honor to caregivers.

Richard Griffin

Breaking with its past practice, the Sunday New York Times this month began featuring same-sex couples among the brides and grooms on its wedding pages. For the record, some other newspapers had done so previously, including several published by the Community Newspaper Company, one of whose papers you are reading now. For the Times, at least, a newspaper boasting international impact and previously rather stuffy in its values, this new policy reflects a notable change of attitude.

In telling about the relationship between Daniel Gross and Steven Goldstein, the Times writer gives us many facts about the two men who the previous evening had exchanged “Jewish vows” before their main ceremony the next day.

The writer injects additional human interest details. For example, when Gross’s mother first heard him tell of being in love with another man, all she could say was a distressful “oy.” But since then, both she and her husband have come to support their son’s choice of partner.

The writer refers to the arrangement between the two men as a “partnership” and a “civil union.” In describing the union of two women, a week later, the Times calls their celebration a “commitment ceremony.” Since no state, not even Vermont, is willing to use the term “marriage” for couples of the same gender, the newspaper does not use the term.

My reason for taking note here of this notable change in journalistic practice is to raise the question of change in social attitudes in the lives of us older people. Most of us grew up with a clear set of values, strongly held by the society around us. But to live long, we discover, is to experience startling departures from these values and to be challenged to adapt to views quite different from our own.

Many of us elders are amazed that people say and do things unthinkable when we were young or even middle aged. Some of us are shocked and scandalized when we see our values rejected or even subjected to ridicule. But, contrary to stereotypes of older people, we also show ourselves quite capable of adapting to some views different from our own and even accepting them with more or less enthusiasm.

My own attitude toward the recognition of love relationships among gay and lesbian couples has changed. Though I grew up in, and still belong to, a faith community that teaches the sinfulness of sexual activity among people of the same gender, I now welcome the commitment of these couples to one another. My bias is to favor love and fidelity wherever they are to be found.

Thus I would rejoice with gay and lesbian friends at their coming together to celebrate a lifetime union. I would hope and pray for their fidelity to one another and be prepared to support them when they face obstacles.

In addition to acceptance of homosexual unions, I also stand strongly in favor of granting to these couples the same civil rights that married people enjoy. I want them to have health insurance, visiting privileges at hospitals, and whatever else will protect their well-being and enhance their fidelity.

However, my acceptance would not extend to calling their union a marriage. My willingness to adapt my values stops short of that change, and I would not want civil authority to allow the term “marriage” for partnerships, however solemnly affirmed, between couples of the same gender.

To me, marriage is by definition a commitment between a woman and a man. It has a unique character making it different from every other relationship. The coming together of male and female in a relationship intended to be permanent and usually looking toward the birth and upbringing of children has a uniqueness about it that should not be diluted.

To make this claim is not to say anything bad about gay and lesbian unions. Nor is it to quibble about words. Both the word “marriage” and the institution it describes have had a long and complex history. It is not clear that “marriage” could accommodate a whole new meaning.

Thus, in early old age, I am quite willing to modify some values about sexuality that I held dearly when younger. But I have my limits. To me, it is important to retain the convictions that remain central to our personality and basic view of the world. Willingness to accept any and all positions simply because they are new would suggest a loss of personhood. To a large extent, after all, we are our convictions.

The views expressed here will probably please hardly anyone. As often happens, I find myself in the uncomfortable middle. Some readers will judge me a confirmed heretic, while others will think me wishy-washy.

But wisdom does not come automatically even to us advanced in years. On some of life’s most important issues, I continue to grope for clarity. In my 75th year, I am still struggling for the truth about my own life and that of the world.                    

Richard Griffin

Last week, we said a final good-bye to Mildred McLaughlin. At her parish church a small group of relatives, and a smaller group of friends, gathered for her simple funeral Mass. No one dropped tears because we felt happy for Mildred’s entering upon a new world after 94 years in this one.

I write about a unique woman and her family who lived in the city where I live. However, there are undoubtedly similar long-lived women and men in every other city and town. They are the people who get to be known as “old timers” and become part of local legend for their style of living, not to say their peculiarities.

Mildred’s home for all but the last two years was on Jackson Street in North Cambridge, several blocks away from the church. There she had lived with her four older sisters in a plain, three-floor wooden house built by her father in 1890 for $1500. In this house the sisters had grown up, learned their place in the family, and took care of the animals they kept in their back yard. These included a cow named Bessie, chickens which provided eggs abundantly, and a dog.

When the McLaughlins were growing up, their section of Cambridge was filled with people of French ethnicity who went to a French-language parish church nearby, but the sisters belonged to the Irish enclave. Both of their parents, William and Mary, were born in Ireland and all of the sisters but Mary eventually visited that country.

Politically, this was Tip O’Neill territory and they were his enthusiastic supporters all the way. In the words of their niece Joanne, “they thought he was the best thing going.”

Mildred’s four older sisters – – Mary, Helen, Cecilia, and Veronica – – went to public high school, then called Cambridge Latin, no short trip from their home. The girls walked the route, a couple of miles each way, without thinking it extraordinary. Mildred, however, was sent to a Catholic school nearby because, in the words of her niece, “they thought she needed it.”

They owned a car but only Cecelia knew how to drive it. Helen had learned but, on one automotive outing, ran into a pear tree and never drove again.

Ultimately, all the sisters, except for one, found employment outside the home. Mildred worked for an insurance company in Boston, making it a practice to eat her lunch at a restaurant each day.  

The oldest sister, Mary, stayed home to take care of the house. Helen, Cecilia, Veronica, and Mildred paid her to do the household work, Monday through Friday, surely a rare arrangement then and now. With even rarer foresight, they also paid Social Security taxes on her employment so that she would have income when she came to retire.

The two brothers in the family, William and John, died in middle age but four of the sisters lived well into their 90s and the other died a few months short of her 90th birthday. As if with a sense of fitness, they died in the order of their birth, beginning with the oldest.

Through the years they enjoyed one another’s company, though Mildred, as the youngest was somewhat spoiled and sometimes out of sorts with the four others. Family members, especially their niece and nephew, loomed large and they relished celebrating holidays with them. Church also was close to the center of their lives offering them a faith that sustained them in hard times.

Despite their other healthful habits, the sisters were not exactly models of nutritional correctness. At the family dinner table, each of the sisters had her own salt shaker. And they would finish each meal by eating something sweet. Mildred also smoked for decades but without any apparent ill effects. She never needed any medications until her last two years.

When she had to move into a nursing home, Mildred found some consolation in knowing that a young family would now live in her house. John, his wife Trudy, and their six-grader son Isaac came to reside on Jackson Street. Only the second family to inhabit the house, they took initiative to meet Mildred and talked with her about the history of the place they had bought from her.

Now that Mildred, the “last leaf,” has fallen, that family tree stands shorn of foliage. She leaves behind a saga of 20th century living in a style vanishing quickly. With rising real estate prices, her neighborhood now boasts families attuned to the high-powered professional world. No longer does one commonly see households with seven children, and adults who walk everyplace they go.

One legacy left behind by Mildred and her sisters is a set of habits that make for good health and longevity. Exercise, low stress, strong community, spiritual life – – these and other elements certainly conduced to long and happy lives for them. Their peculiarities, too, fascinating and endearing, added zest to their lives and perhaps extended them also.

Richard Griffin